The advance of renewable energy and electric vehicles (EVs) has incentivized scientists to look into various ways to solve the problem with efficient energy storage, which is the key to wider adoption of green energy technologies.
Most research focuses on batteries—how to make lithium-ion batteries safer and more efficient or how other, cheaper elements, can be used in batteries.
Most previous research has focused on the chemical storage and the electrochemical reactions in batteries.
Now researchers at Australia’s Queensland University of Technology (QUT) are proposing a design based on the mechanical properties of nanostructures containing diamonds that could potentially be used in mechanical energy storage devices, including batteries, biomedical sensing systems, wearables, and small robotics and electronics.
The mechanical functions of a diamond nanothread (DNT) bundle have the potential to store and release energy when stretched or twisted. These diamond nanothread bundles consist of one-dimensional carbon threads.
“Similar to a compressed coil or children’s wind-up toy, energy can be released as the twisted bundle unravels,” Dr. Haifei Zhan from the QUT Centre for Materials Science said in a statement.
Zhan and his colleagues have found that the diamond bundles have high energy density—that is how much energy a system contains compared to its mass. The team have successfully modeled the mechanical energy storage and release capabilities of a DNT bundle and published their research paper in Nature Communications.
The model is just a first step in the team’s research into the potential of mechanical energy storage as compared to electrochemical energy storage. The scientists now plan to design an experimental nanoscale mechanical energy system as proof of concept and will spend the next two-three years building the system that will control the twisting and stretching of the nanothread bundle.
Recent Comments