Depiction of microrobots in a hazardous environment. Credit: Alex David Jerez Roman, Beckman Institute, UIUC
Braun explains, “We need powerful tiny batteries to unlock the full potential of microscale devices, by improving the electrode architectures and coming up with innovative battery designs.” The problem is that as batteries become smaller, the packaging dominates the battery volume and mass while the electrode area becomes smaller. This results in drastic reductions in energy and power of the battery.
Patra mentions, “To date, electrode architectures and cell designs at the micro-nano scale have been limited to power-dense designs that came at the cost of porosity and volumetric energy density. Our work has been successful to create a microscale energy source that exhibits both high power density and volumetric energy density.”