Energy-storing brick walls

Abstract

Brick walls might someday power your lights and laptop, thanks to a new technique that converts the building blocks into battery-like devices ( 2020, DOI: ). By packing bricks’ tiny pores with conductive polymer nanofibers, researchers have made supercapacitors that can power an LED light for up to 15 min. “Bricks have been around for thousands of years, but we’ve added value and new functionality to them,” says , a chemist at Washington University in St. Louis. The proof-of-concept brick supercapacitor takes 13 min to charge fully and can be recharged 10,000 times. Integrated into walls and coupled with solar panels, the devices could provide emergency power and lighting. Supercapacitors, like batteries, have two electrodes with an electrolyte in between. D’Arcy makes supercapacitor electrodes from conductive polymer nanofibers, whose high surface area can store a relatively large amount of charge. He was inspired when he spotted bricks at the hardware