Bendable, Paper-based Battery

There are so many uses for this technology!!!! It could cause battery prices to decrease, spur innovative portable devices, and reduces, further, the size of many electronic devices. Just think of how small your MP3 player can be if the battery wasn't as big as it is now.
The researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute won't be crowned the first to develop a flexible (or paper-based, for that matter) battery, but their minuscule prototype "is an integrated device, not a combination of pieces" as others typically are. The battery uses "paper infused with an electrolyte and carbon nanotubes that are embedded in the paper," and could eventually be utilized in combination with solar cells or "scaled up and shaped into something like a car door, offering moving electrical storage and power when needed." Currently, however, the wee samples can release just "2.3-volts, or enough to illuminate a small light,"

Some shocking news about wireless electricity

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers said Thursday they have developed a wireless energy transfer technology that could ensure wireless devices are always charged up and ready to go.

The team at MIT, one of the top US academic "laboratories" for new inventions, has road tested the fledgling technology and shown that it can power a 60 watt bulb from a power source two meters away.

That's more than enough juice to supply an average laptop, said Marin Soljacic, a professor of physics at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who has been working on this project for several years.

The concept behind the technology is simple and based on the idea that two resonant objects on the same resonance frequency can exchange energy efficiently.

For this experiment, the MIT team used electromagnetic resonators in the form of copper coils, which oscillated at a certain frequency, trading energy within a given electromagnetic field. One of the coils was attached to a power source. The other acted as a receiver.

The researchers, having proved that the technology dubbed "WiTricity" does work, plan to refine it to make it more efficient, although the range over which wireless power can be delivered probably won't extend beyond a room or a factory floor.

However, they are confident they can enhance the system and make it reliable enough so that consumers can dispense with power cords and even batteries for their laptops, PDAs, Blackberries or cellphones if they are being used in the same room as the power source.

"This is a major milestone," said Soljacic, commenting on the experiment, the details of which appear in the journal Science. "The technology is almost at the point where it could be used for a practical application."