Researchers at
Linköping University’s Laboratory of Organic Electronics, Sweden,
have developed
power paper – a new material with an outstanding ability to store
energy. The
material consists of nanocellulose and a conductive polymer.
The results have
been published in Advanced Science.
(December 5, 2015) One
sheet, 15 centimetres in diameter and a few tenths of a millimetre thick can
store as much as 1 F, which is similar to the supercapacitors currently on the
market. The material can be recharged hundreds of times and each charge only
takes a few seconds.
It’s a dream product in a world where the increased use of
renewable energy requires new methods for energy storage – from summer to
winter, from a windy day to a calm one, from a sunny day to one with heavy
cloud cover.
”Thin films that function as capacitors have existed for
some time. What we have done is to produce the material in three dimensions. We
can produce thick sheets,” says Xavier Crispin, professor of organic
electronics and co-author to the article just published in Advanced Science.
Other co-authors are researchers from KTH Royal Institute of
Technology, Innventia, Technical University of Denmark and the University of
Kentucky.
The material, power paper, looks and feels like a slightly
plasticky paper and the researchers have amused themselves by using one piece
to make an origami swan – which gives an indication of its strength.
The structural foundation of the material is nanocellulose,
which is cellulose fibres which, using high-pressure water, are broken down
into fibres as thin as 20 nm in diameter. With the cellulose fibres in a
solution of water, an electrically charged polymer (PEDOT:PSS), also in a water
solution, is added. The polymer then forms a thin coating around the fibres.