By University of Maryland | September 14, 2018
For well over a decade, battery researchers have known the power and energy benefits such a 3D battery design, but fabrication and testing have been unsuccessful until the recent success by the Maryland NEES team. That’s because they thought to use a technique called atomic-layer deposition, in which each layer is only a few atoms thick. Each material, for each part of the battery, is heated until the atoms create a fine mist which settles down over the shape, attaching itself closely and in a fine thin layer. Building the batteries this way ensured that each layer conformed to the sides of the hole, with no blobs or uncoated spaces.
This paper shows a “definitive proof of concept that energy density and power density increase in accordance with increased surface area,” said Keith Gregorczyk, an assistant research scientist at the University of Maryland, and a member of the team that achieved the 3D microbatteries.