4. Tiny 3-D Printed Batteries

1. Researchers at Harvard University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign announced last year that they have figured out how to 3-D print miniature batteries about 1 mm across.
   The researchers, led by Jennifer A. Lewis, PhD, Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, created and tested materials, or “inks,” able to function as electrochemically active materials. The materials also had to harden into layers in just the right way so they could be stacked up in layers during the 3-D printing—creating working anodes and cathodes.
   The recipe includes ink for the anode with nanoparticles of one lithium metal oxide compound, and an ink for the cathode from“nanoparticles of another.” The printer lays the ink onto the teeth of two gold combs to create a tightly interlaced stack of anodes and cathodes. The whole setup gets packaged into a tiny container and filled it with an electrolyte solution to complete the battery.
   Tiny batteries could be game-changing for the medical device industry, finding use in applications such as biomedical sensors and skin-based monitoring devices. In addition, they could be embedded into plastic housing of devices such as hearing aids.
   Narayan says that he and his team are exploring the limits of 3-D printing. “Using a 3-D printing technique known as two-photon polymerization, we have created small-scale medical devices such as drug delivery devices and biosensors.” They have also developed a biocompatible riboflavin-containing photoinitiator for two-photon polymerization of tissue engineering scaffolds.
   Two-photon polymerization uses lasers shining two different-wavelength beams on a sensitive material. Where the beams intersect, the material is polymerized. Then residual material can be washed out. Narayan continues, “I think that more biocompatible materials for 3-D printing, particularly for processes like stereolithography,microstereolithography, and two-photon polymerization, will facilitate wider use of these technologies for commercial production of medical devices.”

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