This 3D-Printed Cement Stores Energy While Supporting a Building
Concrete already makes up the floors, walls, columns, and foundations of our buildings. Researchers are now working on a way to give all that concrete another job: storing electricity. A team has developed a 3D-printed cement-based supercapacitor that combines energy storage and structural strength in a single material, allowing parts of a building to double as giant energy-storage devices.
Building a practical cement-based supercapacitor presented the team with some major challenges. A thin interface between the electrodes and separator can have poor mechanical properties, while making the device thicker increases the distance ions must travel through the material.
The researchers tackled both problems by changing how the supercapacitor is built. They first created a printable electrode ink from cement, carbon nanotubes, and carbon black. Using direct ink writing, a form of extrusion-based 3D printing, they deposited the conductive material into a cement-based separator in an interdigitated pattern. Rather than simple...
Copyright of this story solely belongs to www.hackster.io. To see the full text click HERE
