Wait, you mean I can make a battery out of just paper and ink?
Respect to the guy on YouTube who just showed me how to make paper batteries, because my mind is now whirling with ideas about powering all kinds of things with them. It's left me wondering if they could help power gaming mice, but turns out that's a bit of a long shot.
Robert Murray-Smith recently posted a video(opens in new tab) online detailing exactly how to make these paper battery cells, something that Stanford University has allegedly tried to claim as its own invention, but by Robert's estimations has actually been around since the 1880s.
You'll be surprised to learn that actually bashing one of these lightweight babies out isn't as difficult as it might sound. Rob simply followed the steps laid out by Alexandre Poulin et al. in their paper about these water activated disposable paper batteries(opens in new tab).
Robert says the design is «based on a number of inks.» There's a Cathode ink, an Anode ink, and a current collector ink, which together make a battery.
The Cathode even includes a material called Shellac—something you may have heard any of your manicured friends talking about in the context of getting their nails done—which works as a binder for the rest of the materials involved. It's kept flexible and prevented from drying out with Polyethylene glycol (the plasticiser), and Ethanol (the carrier) is used to mix it all up, with Graphite being the main ingredient.
The authors of the paper claim two of these batteries can power a digital clock for about two hours
The Anode ink and current collector ink are both essentially the same concoction (with slightly different proportions), only you replace the Graphite with Zinc powder, or add some carbon black for the collector.
Other than that, all you need is
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