The team from Washington University in St. Louis (USA) found a way to turn the bricks into the energy storage. In their experiment, they used these bricks modified to operate led lighting.
Scientists began with the fact that the coated standard red bricks a conductive polymer called PEDOT. It consists of nanofibers, which penetrate into the pores of the brick and turn it into “the ion sponge”, able to conduct and store electricity.
As a result of normal bricks turn into supercapacitors that can hold large amounts of energy and recharge faster than conventional batteries. Adjusting the number, you can create a grid larger or smaller capacity and covering the whole wall with epoxy resin, can be safely guarded from the weather.
In the experiment, the scientists demonstrated that the usual bricks can be charged to 3 volts for 10 seconds, and that’s enough to then power the led light for 10 minutes. Moreover, this process can go even under water. The walls of these bricks can be connected to renewable sources of energy (e.g., solar cells), and then feed them to a system of sensors or lighting. And because each brick is a supercapacitor, it can be charged and discharged hundreds of thousands of times within hours.
According to experts, developed at the University of Washington technology is simple and inexpensive to implement. The study was published in the journal Nature Communications.
Source — Washington University in St. Louis