Combo method prints batteries in any shape

Abstract

Using three-dimensional printing, designers can make customized products, including shoe soles, engine parts, and hearing aids. But when designers want to make new personal electronics, their imaginations are limited by the shapes of existing batteries, such as coin shapes, rectangles, cylinders, and pouches. Harvard University materials scientist Jennifer Lewis, who specializes in materials and methods for 3-D printing, wants to make it possible for batteries to be designed around the electronics they will power, not vice versa. She and her colleagues have now combined 3-D printing and other techniques to make batteries in any shape, including rings, letters, circles, and more (ACS Nano 2018, DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.8b02744). In 2013, Lewis’s lab was the first to make 3-D-printed batteries using lithium-ion chemistry (Adv. Mater. 2013, DOI: 10.1002/adma.201301036). Because the materials in these batteries are water sensitive and flammable, she says, they had to do all their work in a glovebox filled with