If there were a pantheon of technological hipness, right now three front-runners for induction would be 3D printing, aerogel and graphene. They all rank high on the disruptive technology scale, have enormous amounts of good press, and excite the imagination with their potential. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researchers have gone beyond combining chocolate and peanut butter by blending the three higher-tech ingredients into a rather amazing battery material with excellent electrical and mechanical properties. We have discussed the idea of structural batteries in this blog, and this new melding of technologies holds much promise. Aerogel, as defined in the Laboratory’s announcement, “is a synthetic porous, ultralight material derived from a gel, in which the liquid component of the gel has been replaced with a gas. It is often referred to as ‘liquid smoke.’” Lawrence Livermore researchers have used a 3D printing technique known as direct ink writing to craft an engineered architecture microlattice with well-defined pores – which are essential …