Red bricks—some of the world's cheapest and most familiar building materials—can be converted into energy storage units that can be charged to hold electricity, like a battery, according to new research from Washington University in St. Louis. Chemists in Arts & Sciences have developed a method to make or modify "smart bricks" that can store energy until required for powering devices. A proof-of-concept published Aug. 11 in Nature Communications shows a brick directly powering a green LED light. They have developed a coating of the conducting polymer PEDOT, which is comprised of nanofibers that penetrate the inner porous network of a brick; a polymer coating remains trapped in a brick and serves as an ion sponge that stores and conducts electricity.
The red pigment in bricks—iron oxide, or rust—is essential for triggering the polymerisation reaction. The authors' calculations suggest that walls made of these energy-storing bricks could store a substantial amount of energy. "PEDOT-coated bricks are ideal building blocks that can provide power to emergency lighting. This could be a reality when you connect our bricks with solar cells—this could take 50 bricks in close proximity to the load. These 50 bricks would enable powering emergency lighting for five hours. Advantageously, a brick wall serving as a supercapacitor can be recharged hundreds of thousands of times within an hour. If you connect a couple of bricks, microelectronics sensors would be easily powered.
The paper, "Energy storing bricks for stationary PEDOT supercapacitors," has been scheduled for publication in Nature Communications on 11 August 2020.
Full Article with Video: https://techxplore.com/news/2020-08-energy-red-bricks.html
The red pigment in bricks—iron oxide, or rust—is essential for triggering the polymerisation reaction. The authors' calculations suggest that walls made of these energy-storing bricks could store a substantial amount of energy. "PEDOT-coated bricks are ideal building blocks that can provide power to emergency lighting. This could be a reality when you connect our bricks with solar cells—this could take 50 bricks in close proximity to the load. These 50 bricks would enable powering emergency lighting for five hours. Advantageously, a brick wall serving as a supercapacitor can be recharged hundreds of thousands of times within an hour. If you connect a couple of bricks, microelectronics sensors would be easily powered.
The paper, "Energy storing bricks for stationary PEDOT supercapacitors," has been scheduled for publication in Nature Communications on 11 August 2020.
Full Article with Video: https://techxplore.com/news/2020-08-energy-red-bricks.html
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