MIT engineers design tiny batteries for powering cell-sized robots

https://news.mit.edu/2024/mit-engineers-design-tiny-batteries-powering-cell-sized-robots-0815

by meysamazad • 2 years ago

104 19 2 years ago

news.mit.edu

rqtwteye• 2 years ago

Headlines like this show the branding power the big schools have. If it's one of the big ones the headline is "<School name> scientists do X". If it's a small or international school, it's "Scientists do X", never "Boise Community College students do X".

the__alchemist• 2 years ago

MIT is notorious for these PR hype articles.

mhb• 2 years ago

Huh? It's an MIT publication.

Keyframe• 2 years ago

Point made; It's not Boise Community College publication!

vpribish• 2 years ago

Headline like this are what is eroding MIT's reputation. They have overhyped things so many times that I actively avoid reading anything they put out.

buescher2• 2 years ago

Alrighty then. "a current of up to 1 volt". Any science or engineering journalist, even at MIT News level, could get that wrong, but not all of them. They should have better fact-checking.

Neat application though. Obviously, don't expect to buy one next week. But what's interesting here is that you'd think that electrochemical cells, which are going to scale by volume (cube law) as they get smaller, would not be as effective in these micro-scale applications as the energy harvesting/wireless energy schemes people seem to like work on, which mostly scale by aperture/area (square law). They treat that in passing, basically, the problem with solar is sometime's it's dark, but it's not very edifying.

cushychicken• 2 years ago

That was the first thing I saw too and my eyes immediately glazed over.

No reason to read the rest of this fucker! XD

adoyle• 2 years ago

The text says “a current with a potential of up to 1 volt.” The key word is potential, i.e. electrical potential whose SI unit is the volt. That must be the amount of potential that this particular chemical reaction can create. Since the current probably depends on the amounts of the chemicals involved, the article doesn’t state that.

mlyle• 2 years ago

The text now says that, yes, but the original did not according to archive.org.

nikisweeting• 2 years ago

It's an article about new battery tech with no mention of power density, energy density, or even the word "watt". Instant tab close.

DiogenesKynikos• 2 years ago

It's the university's press release for a paper published in a scientific journal: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scirobotics.ade4642.

Scientific press releases are usually poorly written, by people who don't necessarily understand the science. Look at the paper if you want details.

vhiremath4• 2 years ago

This might be a dumb question, but I wonder what the lifespan of this battery is. When the zinc oxidizes, the electrode eventually becomes less effective as an anode right?

passwordoops2• 2 years ago

Not a dumb question at all, and something I hope they address in the actual publication, which is what should have been linked to instead of the usual shoddy PR

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scirobotics.ade4642

passwordoops2• 2 years ago

For anyone interested in substance:

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scirobotics.ade4642

Neywiny• 2 years ago

The paper says they got 760 wh/l which isn't bad. Normal zinc-air is 2.5x that, but these small ones aren't that different to lithium ion. I think that's pretty great.

P_I_Staker• 2 years ago

I've been saying for years that pockets enable batteries, NOT vica versa. What happens is people go thinking that the battery enables the pockets. The pockets are getting smaller. BUT this is not TRUE!

I've reading somewhere about the stats and the pockets are bigger than ever. It's simple we don't have the batteries, "the size selector" that enable us to get the most ideal pockets that I have in my dreams.

We need batteries that enable the smallest pockets of all time. Much "work" is being done on "smarting the phone". No body considered that it coulds be the side of a coin. This is something they could be working on.

Imagine terminals everywere, you insert your "smartphone", and it's a whole PC! You can even insert into a payphone to make regular phone. There's still payphones everywhere. It's just an idea.

MIT engineers design tiny batteries for powering cell-sized robots

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