Scientific American
reports that a team of scientists from Rice University in Houston and the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium have been working on a “spray-on” battery that’s deployed through an aerosol can. Although the idea has a vague “They called me mad, mad!” sound to it, Scientific American says that the invention could conceivably transform any surface into a potential energy storage device. The magazine says the spray is layered like most batteries with “a positive current collector, a cathode that attracts positively charged ions, an ion-conducting separator, an anode to attract negative ions, and a negative current collector.” Team member Neelam Singh says that the technology he’s helping to develop could even lead to “paint-on solar cells” that could transform entire houses into “solar-energy capture-and-storage devices.”
