There’s a revolution in battery technology hiding in plain sight: The 3-D printing of batteries has the potential to put energy storage inside any device. This will enable lightweight and long-lasting consumer gadgets, long-range military drones and even nanoscale robots.
The way the world manufactures batteries has changed hardly at all in 30 years. Almost all the innovations we regularly hear about—from cheaper, tougher electric-vehicle batteries to “Holy Grail” solid-state batteries—are about changing the chemistry of batteries.
The promise of battery-tech 3-D printing (aka additive manufacturing) is simple: What if batteries could fill any available space, even structural elements of our gadgets, rather than always taking a rigid shape like a pouch or cylinder?
The new approach has obvious appeal. The entire airframe of a drone could be filled with energy storage for increased range. Smartglasses could have sleek battery-packed frames, so they look like everyday eyewear rather than “Revenge of the Nerds” props.
One of the biggest advantages of 3-D printing is that it works with any battery, regardless of its cell chemistry. It could advance today’s lithium-ion as well as emerging sodium-ion and solid-state tech.
can you make a 3d printed battery that never needs replacing? or are you counting on planned obsolescence?
Existing batteries can last for thousands of cycles and still keep 80% of its initial capacity. We don’t get the more advanced stuff in consumer goods first, so the initial applications will be military, as with so many things. The story itself cites a source projecting a 10-year timeline for commodity commercialization, by which time more advanced chemistries like solid state should be online, and the printing method has already been shown to handle various existing nonplanar methods.
Seems like you didn’t read the article and are looking to be contrarian. Were this ready for primetime tomorrow, I’d have posted in tech, not science. Even today, no one is refusing to buy things with nonreplaceable embedded batteries (we’re not talking phones and laptops, if that’s the implication) with a high cycle limit, so that’s not a current showstopper.
