NEW HAVEN, Conn. - Our bright, shiny technology future is getting a bright, shiny new fuel cell to go with it.
Yale University engineers have developed a process to create micro fuel cells made of glass. The tiny gizmos hold the potential for durable, less expensive energy sources in an array of consumer products.
"I think it's huge," said Andre D. Taylor, assistant professor of chemical and environmental engineering at the Yale School of Engineering and Applied Science. "People haven't really looked at these materials for these applications."
Taylor and his colleagues presented their research in the online journal Small. It's just the latest in a string of successes for Taylor's team in applying nanotechnology to various electrochemical processes, using bulk metallic glass.
Bulk metallic glass, or BMGs, are metal alloys that have a disorderly atomic structure. This random structure makes the material stronger and more pliable than metals with a definitive, crystalline structure.
"What really got me interested in them was that you can form them on a very small scale," Taylor says.
That's possible thanks to a process called thermoplastic forming, which allows scientists and manufacturers to mold and shape BMGs as if they were plastic. This would be less-expensive than the current manufacturing technology for micro fuel cells, which use materials such as stainless steel and silicon.
Another Yale professor, Jan Schroers, has led the way in thermoplastic processing. It was Schroers, in fact, who approached Taylor several years ago with the idea of merging their two fields of expertise.
"Because we had this technique, we said, what can we do with this?" Taylor said. "So we set out to build a fuel cell."
Yale doctoral student Ryan C. Sekol, the lead author of the paper in Small, said it took about a year to come up with the first major results showing that nanotechnology and BMGs could make a viable micro fuel cell.
"We were downstairs here, in the lab," Sekol recalled. "We got a really high power output and were psyched to say the least. There were a couple of high fives."
The new micro fuel cells can be produced quicker than steel or silicon versions. They also don't need special coatings to protect against corrosion.
Once Taylor's process is further refined, it could be used in remote sensors, smartphones and tablets.
"There are some challenges," Taylor said. "We want to improve the results we've found."
In the meantime, Taylor's lab is working on a variety of projects, including batteries and solar cells.
"We have a knack for looking at different fields and seeing how they apply to us," Taylor said.
