The three biggest words in battery structures are “Area, Area, Area.” The more anode and cathode area a battery can expose to the electrolyte that carries ions and electrons between the positive and negative ends of the battery, the better. Most battery configurations, according to researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and Missouri University of Science and Technology, block a great deal of interaction between these elements. Their solution is to go porous in a microlattice battery, thanks to 3D printing. Electrodes present some surface area to the electrolyte, which can only interact with the surface area presented. Rahul Panat at Carnegie Mellon and Jonghyun Park at Missouri S & T have created a cube-shaped battery composed of microlattice electrodes which present significantly greater amounts of surface area to the electrolyte. The title of their paper (with co-author Mohammad Sadeq Saleh) brings out this “area rule”: “3D printed hierarchically-porous microlattice electrode materials for exceptionally high specific capacity and areal capacity lithium …
