UK UNIVERSITY TO 3D PRINT GRAPHENE SUPER BATTERIES

Manchester Metropolitan University Receives £500,000 Grant to Build 3D Printer

The UK’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) has awarded Manchester Metropolitan University with a £500,000 grant to research the 3D printing of graphene batteries. Manchester Met’s Prof. Craig Banks and Matt Pilling want to develop a graphene 3D printer to produce super batteries from unique 3D structures. This technology could ideally be used to store renewable energy. According to Prof. Banks, “Energy storage systems (ESS) are critical to address climate change and, as clean energy is generated through a variety of ways, an efficient way to store this energy is required. Lithium and sodium ion batteries and super/ultracapacitors are promising approaches to achieve this. This project will be utilising the reported benefits of graphene – it is more conductive than metal – and applying these into ESS.”

The current way of 3D printing graphene involves a curing process that takes a considerable period of time, around an hour per layer, so Prof. Banks hopes to develop a solution to overcome this issue. He said, “We need to figure out a way to cure it directly, possibly by shining a UV light on to it, as anything above a micron level takes a long time. Ideally, we could have the brilliant scenario where you just plug in and go – printing whatever structure you want out of graphene from a machine on your desk.”