Power Paper, created by researchers at Sweden’s Linköping University, is a new kind of paper with an amazing ability to store energy like a supercapacitor. Power Paper, with its exceptional ability to conduct ions and electrons, has provided a cheap and eco-friendly way of storing energy.
The structural foundation of the material is nano-cellulose. Cellulose fibers are dehydrated until they break down into fibers as thin as 20nm in diameter. After that, the fibers are coated with an electrically-charged polymer and round sheets are produced.
Here are some of its features:
- Power Paper is lightweight, waterproof, and feels like a slightly plasticky paper.
- Power Paper is cheap and is made from renewable cellulose and a readily available polymer.
- Power Paper is eco-friendly as it does not involve any heavy metals or toxic materials found in traditional batteries and capacitors.
- It can be recharged in seconds and can be charged hundreds of times.
- A circular sheet of 15cm diameter and a few tenths of a millimeter thickness can store around 1Farad, similar to the storage capacity of supercapacitors available in markets.
Power Paper has no doubt the potential to revolutionize the field of renewable energy storage. However, researchers have yet to develop an industrial-scale process mass-produce the product.
