Developing rechargeable inks for screen printed batteries

For many, the art of screen printing brings to mind a row of Campbells’ Soup, or the colourful likeness of Marylin Munroe – designs straight from the pop art pantheon.  

For Dr Miaoqiang Lyu, screen printing means making batteries.   

And he and his team at UQ are working on ‘rechargeable’ inks that could the shape of electronics as we know it.

An ARC DECRA fellow jointly appointed at the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN) and UQ’s School of Chemical Engineering, Dr Lyu is dedicated to developing the next generation flexible energy storage and conversion devices.  

This includes working with industry to develop printable, thin-film batteries for internet-of-things devices, such as fitness equipment, wearable sensors, and medical patches.

“The devices we have in our homes, in our pockets, or on our bodies are getting thinner, smaller, and more flexible,” Dr Lyu says.

“But there is a bottleneck: these devices need batteries that are also thin and flexible while still being powerful enough to work.

“That is where our research comes in. Batteries that can be printed on demand, to fit whatever device you need.”

Dr Lyu has worked on printable batteries with various commercial collaborators, including Printed Energy Pty Ltd through the Advance QLD Industry Fellowship program, and with Reid Print Technologies via seeding grant awarded across the faculties of Health and Behavioural Sciences (HaBS), and Engineering, Architecture and Information Technology (EAIT).

In a paper spearheaded by now-graduated UQ PhD candidate Caroline (Shiwei) Tao, Dr Lyu also helped outline a first-of-its-kind formula that could help screen print better zinc batteries.

This research was published in Advanced Functional Materials as the final paper from Caroline’s thesis at the School of Mechanical and Mining Engineering.

In it, researchers describe a commercially viable polymer electrolyte that employs a low-cost organic electrolyte solvent.

This new ink is capable of overcoming existing cost and rechargeability challenges in flexible thin-film batteries, because it can be printed in ambient conditions, using it also simplifies production by removing several processing steps.

Dr Lyu, who helped oversee the paper, says it could point to a new generation of flexible batteries that are stronger, replicable and – crucially - rechargeable.

“The current crop of printed zinc batteries are made with aqueous liquid electrolytes, meaning they have limited battery charge, cyclability, and energy density,” Dr Lyu says.

“Most of these batteries are primary use – meaning they cannot be recharged.”

“This gel polymer electrolyte ultimately gives us a secondary – or rechargeable - battery that demonstrates high electrochemical performance and compatibility with screen-printing technologies.”

While the printed battery industry is still in a relative state of infancy, Dr Lyu believes this work could help bridge the gap between academic research and industry applications, providing valuable insights for future advancements in the field.

“The key now is to develop larger demonstrations of this technology,” he says.

You can read the full paper here.

Contributors to Advanced Functional Materials paper also included senior group leader ARC Laureate and joint AIBN-School of Chemical Engineering appointment Professor Lianzhou Wang, as well as Associate Professor Ruth Knibbe and Julio Ramirez from the School of Mechanical and Mining Engineering, Dr Heather Shewan from UQ’s School of Chemical Engineering, and Professor Ian Gentle from UQ’s School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences.