14 DAY TRIAL // We're all familiar with batteries, which produce electricity through a chemical reaction. We are also familiar, though perhaps a bit less so, with capacitors, which store energy. Now, I suspect we'll quickly become familiar with energy-storing cables.
You see, the world has just undergone a paradigm shift. Cables used to be those ugly, wiry things that could lead an electrical current from one place to another.
Everything works on cables, unless they have batteries, and even then, you need to hook a cable from time to time to recharge it.
Only devices with wireless charging support are exempt from that, and they're very rare, as the technology was only recently unveiled.
Now, cables are about to make a comeback, due to Nanotechnology Scientist and Professor Jayan Thomas, and his Ph.D. student Zenan Yu, from the University of Central Florida research lab.
What did they do? Why, they actually invented cables that can store electricity, just as batteries would. And they pulled it off with a lightweight copper wire too.
The copper wire was the starting point. You see, the scientists grew a layer of nanowhiskers, of all things, on the outer surface of it.
They treated those whiskers with a special alloy after that, creating an electrode. Then they added a very thin plastic sheet around the whiskers and wrapped it around using a metal sheath. Voila, the second electrode was born.
An anode and cathode (the two electrodes) are what ultimately produce the electricity in a battery. But since they couldn't include the sort of chemical mixtures that batteries used, they decided to just borrow from the idea of capacitors too.
The result was effectively a supercapacitor on the outside of the copper wire. The layer of whiskers and the thin plastic overlaying it were glued together with a special gel, you see. The nanowhisker layer is insulated, but the inner copper wire can still channel electricity, while the layers around the wire independently store a lot of power.
It shouldn't be too hard to apply the technique to other materials, like, say, clothing fabric. Flexible solar cells could be used together with the fibers to make a jacket that can recharge your phones or smartwatch.
Electrical vehicles, space-launch vehicles and portable electronic devices will probably benefit from the invention sooner though.
"It's very exciting," said professor Thomas. "We take it step by step. I love getting to the lab everyday, and seeing what we can come up with next. Sometimes things don't work out, but even those failures teach us a lot of things. Still, I know how important getting out of the lab can be too. I won't be giving up those evening walks anytime soon. I get some great ideas during that quiet time."