https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1131&context=usdoepub

A review of polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells: Technology, applications,and needs on fundamental research

Although current high-energy-density lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) have taken over the commercial rechargeable battery market, increasing concerns about limited lithium resources, high cost, and insecurity of organic electrolyte scale-up limit their further development. Rechargeable aqueous zinc-ion batteries (ZIBs), an alternative battery chemistry, have paved the way not only for realizing environmentally benign and safe energy storage devices but also for reducing the manufacturing costs of next-generation batteries. This Review underscores recent advances in aqueous ZIBs; these include the design of a highly reversible Zn anode, optimization of the electrolyte, and a wide range of cathode materials and their energy storage mechanisms. We also present recent advanced techniques that aim at overcoming the current issues in aqueous ZIB systems. This Review on the future perspectives and research directions will provide a guide for future aqueous ZIB study.

Recent Advances in Aqueous Zinc-Ion Batteries

Power consumption is forecast by the International Technology Roadmap of Semiconductors (ITRS) to pose long-term technical challenges for the semiconductor industry. The purpose of this paper is threefold: (1) to provide an overview of strategies for powering MEMS via non-regenerative and regenerative power supplies; (2) to review the fundamentals of piezoelectric energy harvesting, along with recent advancements, and (3) to discuss future trends and applications for piezoelectric energy harvesting technology. The paper concludes with a discussion of research needs that are critical for the enhancement of piezoelectric energy harvesting devices.

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Powering MEMS portable devices—a review of non-regenerative and regenerative power supply systems with special emphasis on piezoelectric energy harvesting systems

With a worldwide trend towards the efficient use of renewable energies and the rapid expansion of the electric vehicle market, the importance of rechargeable battery technologies, particularly lithium-ion batteries, has steadily increased. In the past few years, a major breakthrough in electrolyte materials was achieved by simply increasing the salt concentration in suitable salt–solvent combinations, offering technical superiority in numerous figures of merit over alternative materials. This long-awaited, extremely simple yet effective strategy can overcome most of the remaining hurdles limiting the present lithium-ion batteries without sacrificing manufacturing efficiency, and hence its impact is now widely felt in the scientific community, with serious potential for industrial development. This Review aims to provide timely and objective information that will be valuable for designing better realistic batteries, including a multi-angle analysis of their advantages and disadvantages together with future perspectives. Emphasis is placed on the pathways to address the remaining technical and scientific issues rather than re-highlighting the many technical advantages. New electrolyte materials can offer breakthroughs in the development of next-generation batteries. Here Atsuo Yamada and colleagues review the progress made and the road ahead for salt-concentrated electrolytes, an emerging and promising electrolyte candidate.

Advances and issues in developing salt-concentrated battery electrolytes

The push towards miniaturized electronics calls for the development of miniaturized energy-storage components that can enable sustained, autonomous operation of electronic devices for applications such as wearable gadgets and wireless sensor networks. Microsupercapacitors have been targeted as a viable route for this purpose, because, though storing less energy than microbatteries, they can be charged and discharged much more rapidly and have an almost unlimited lifetime. In this Review, we discuss the progress and the prospects of integrated miniaturized supercapacitors. In particular, we discuss their power performances and emphasize the need of a three-dimensional design to boost their energy-storage capacity. This is obtainable, for example, through self-supported nanostructured electrodes. We also critically evaluate the performance metrics currently used in the literature to characterize microsupercapacitors and offer general guidelines to benchmark performances towards prospective applications.

Microsupercapacitors as miniaturized energy-storage components for on-chip electronics

A technology was developed for the fabrication of very thin, chip-sized lithium secondary micro batteries. Based on wafer level processing the batteries can be directly implemented into silicon chips, 3D chip stacks or MEMS devices. The batteries were packaged in 200 µm deep cavities of the silicon wafer and encapsulated with a glass substrate. Battery demonstrators with 7 and 12 mm2 and round foot print were realized.

Development of near hermetic silicon/glass cavities for packaging of integrated lithium micro batteries

Discharge Performance Dependence on Electrode Thickness for Li4Ti5O12/LiMn2O4 Cells for Application in Wafer-Integrated Microbatteries

The invention relates to a proton-conducting polymer membrane and to a method for the production thereof. Starting from a catalyst layer, which is homogeneously deposited on the polymer membrane (3), the catalyst layer is subdivided into a number of catalyst segments (1a, 1b) by microstructuring so that adjacent fuel cell units of a planar fuel cell arrangement can be realized in the smallest possible space.

Proton-conducting polymer membrane and method for the production thereof

muFly EU project started in 2006 with the idea to build an autonomous micro helicopter, comparable in size and weight to a small bird. Several scientific and technological objectives were identified. This spanned from system-level integration, high efficiency micro-actuation, highly integrated micro vision sensors and IMUs and also low processing power navigation algorithms. This paper shows how most of these objectives were reached, describing the approach and the role of each partner during the whole project. The paper describes also the technological developments achieved like the 80 g, 17 cm micro robotic-helicopter, the 8 g omnidirectional and steady-state laser scanner, the uIMU, the highly efficient micro motors, the high power-density fuel-cell and the successful graph-based navigation algorithms.

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Towards Palm-Size Autonomous Helicopters

A cost effective and reliable technology for the fabrication of electrochemical test-cell arrays for battery materials research, based on batch-fabricated glass micro packages was developed and tested. Jet dispensing was investigated for the first time as a process for fabricating battery electrode arrays and separators and compared to micro dispense printing. The process shows the reproducibility over the whole range of investigated materials and battery cell structures that is required for battery materials research. Such setup gives rise to a significantly improved reliability and reproducibility of electrochemical experiments. Cost-effective fabrication of our test chips by batch processing allows for their single-use in electrochemical experiments, thereby preventing contamination issues due to repeated use as in conventional laboratory test cells. In addition, the integration of micro pseudo reference electrodes is demonstrated. Thus, the test cell array together with the developed electrode/electrolyte deposition technology provide a highly efficient tool for speedy combinatorial and high throughput testing of battery materials on a system level (full cell tests). Experimental results are shown for the microfabrication of lithium-ion test cells with help of several electrode and binder materials. The influence of jetting parameters on electrode lateral dimensions and thickness, reproducibility of the electrode mass as well as the use of integrated micro-reference electrodes for impedance spectroscopy and cyclic voltammetry measurements in micro cells are presented in detail.

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Robert Hahn

Papers

Development of near hermetic silicon/glass cavities for packaging of integrated lithium micro batteries

Discharge Performance Dependence on Electrode Thickness for Li4Ti5O12/LiMn2O4 Cells for Application in Wafer-Integrated Microbatteries

Proton-conducting polymer membrane and method for the production thereof

Towards Palm-Size Autonomous Helicopters

High-throughput battery materials testing based on test cell arrays and dispense/jet printed electrodes