Green Batteries
Emerging technologies within smart packaging, biomedical diagnostics, food and environmental sensing are shifting the requirements of electronic components where their service lifetime is now counted in days instead of years. This short operation time and the challenges associated with proper disposal and recycling of traditional electronics is causing an enormous environmental stress resulting in electronic waste being currently the fastest growing waste stream. As a result new green materials and sustainable environmentally friendly processing techniques for electronics are urgently needed. Being central in most electronic devices, we focus are work in this project on the development of new green supercapacitors and batteries. The technologies that we are researching are based on the use of non-toxic environmentally friendly materials and make use of efficient additive manufacturing techniques (i.e. printing) under ambient conditions. The developed batteries and systems target low power and high-volume applications within e.g. logistics monitoring, food sensing and biomedical diagnostics. At their end of life these devices can be recycled or safely disposed of in composting conditions.
![https://3s17.empa.ch/documents/55954/19076587/greenbatteries.jpg/03b90b40-a91d-41a9-9d52-29c40720a028?t=1635859444000](https://3s17.empa.ch/documents/55954/19076587/greenbatteries.jpg/03b90b40-a91d-41a9-9d52-29c40720a028?t=1635859444000)
Selected Publication
Fully 3D Printed and Disposable Paper Supercapacitor. Xavier Aeby, Alexandre Poulin, Gilberto Siqueira, Michael K. Hausmann and Gustav Nyström. Advanced Materials, 33(26): 2101328 (2021).
Reports in Media
The biodegradable battery. Empa Press Release
Biodegradable battery brings sustainability to the Internet of Things. Materials Today
Nun gibt es kompostierbare Batterien aus dem 3-D-Drucker. Tagesanzeiger
Diese kompostierbare Batterie kannst du ohne schlechtes Gewissen wegwerfen. 20 Minuten
Kompostierbare Batterien. SRF 10 vor 10 Die Idee
Related Projects
Printed Paper Batteries – Empa IRC project (2019-2021)
Fungal Biobatteries – Gerbert Rüf Stiftung (2020-2023)
Green Smart Packaging (GREENsPACK) – Bridge Discovery (2020-2024)