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While the initial experiments had used potentially explosive materials to generate the pulse of heat that drives the reaction, the new work uses a much more benign fuel: sucrose, otherwise known as ordinary table sugar. But the team believes that other combustion materials have the potential to generate even higher efficiencies. Unlike other technologies that are specific to a particular chemical formulation, the carbon nanotube-based power system works just on heat, so as better heat sources are developed they could simply be swapped into a system to improve its performance, Strano says.
Already, the device is powerful enough to show that it can power simple electronic devices such as an LED light. And unlike batteries that can gradually lose power if they are stored for long periods, the new system should have a virtually indefinite shelf life, Liu says. That could make it suitable for uses such as a deep-space probe that remains dormant for many years as it travels to a distant planet and then needs a quick burst of power to send back data when it reaches its destination.
In addition, the new system is very scalable for use in the increasingly tiny wearable devices that are emerging. Batteries and fuel cells have limitations that make it difficult to shrink them to tiny sizes, Mahajan says, whereas this system “can scale down to very small limits. The scale of this is unique.”
This work is “an important demonstration of increasing the energy and lifetime of thermopower wave-based systems,” says Kourosh Kalantar-Zadeh, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at RMIT University in Australia, who was not involved in this research. “I believe that we are still far from the upper limit that the thermopower wave devices can potentially reach,” he says. “However, this step makes the technology more attractive for real applications.”
He adds that with this technology, “We can obtain phenomenal bursts of power, which is not possible from batteries. For instance, the thermopower wave systems can be used for powering long-distance transmission units in micro- and nano-telecommunication hubs.”
The team also included Anton Cottrill, Yuichiro Kunai, David Bender, Javier Castillo Jr., and Stephen Gibbs. The work was supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the Office of Naval Research.
