Energy Storage and Conversion
Advanced modes of energy storage remain critical in addressing several societal challenges including fossil fuel depletion, greenhouse gas emission, and better health and wellness through improved therapy delivery and physiological monitoring. Nanomaterials and nanostructures provide the enabling technology for future generations of energy storage. Current battery systems remain a significant barrier to the wide-spread adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) or plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs). Vehicles demand batteries that are lightweight, can provide bursts of high power, and offer a long life. Nano-sized particles utilized in the anode and cathode electrode structures of the batteries facilitate rapid and complete access of ions and electrons to the core of each particle. This desirable feature enables the high power bursts needed to operate the vehicles and facilitates complete utilization of the active materials. Due to full utilization of the active materials, the entire battery design can be more compact providing light weight and long life between charge cycles.
New generations of medical devices are being developed to provide novel forms of therapy and continuous monitoring of key physiological parameters. Widespread adoption of these approaches would be facilitated by smaller devices to provide the physician greater flexibility in patient selection and determination of the implant location. Since the battery is typically the largest component of a device, significant downsizing of the battery would favorably translate into a significantly smaller device. One of the challenging features in developing micropower sources is that the instantaneous power level demanded by the devices is frequently not reduced even though the overall drain rate is lower. Therefore, as the power source is down-sized the power demand per unit volume is escalated even with no increase in demand from the device. As discussed above, rapid access of the electrode active materials by ions and electrons enabled by nanomaterials and nanostructures internal to the battery provides the needed technical breakthrough. Utilization of nanomaterials and nanostructures for the development of micropower sources can potentially meet the challenge of high power to volume ratios needed by advanced medical devices.
