Energy Focus: Li-ion microbattery fabricated by 3D printing
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LuMnO3 thin films reveal ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic properties simultaneously
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lectronic components made of several layers with different magnetic orders are frequently used in various devices such as in read heads for hard drives, which read the data stored, or in highly sensitive magnetic field sensors, which are read electrically. An international team of researchers from the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI), Switzerland; École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland; the Institut Laue-Langevin, France; the University of Fribourg, Switzerland; and ETH Zürich have now found a material that combines different magnetic properties. The material used is lutetium manganese oxide (LuMnO3), which has a perovskite structure much like hightemperature superconductors. The thin, single crystalline layers were grown using
Energy Focus Li-ion microbattery fabricated by 3D printing
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hree-dimensional (3D) printing can now be used to print lithium-ion microbatteries. The printed microbatteries could supply electricity to tiny devices in fields from medicine to communications, including many that have lingered on laboratory benches for lack of a battery small enough to fit the device, yet powerful enough to drive the device. As reported in the June 17 online edition of Advanced Materials (DOI: 10.1002/adma.201301036), a research team based at Harvard University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign created an ink for the anode with nanoparticles of Li4Ti5O12 (LTO), and an ink for the cathode from nanoparticles of LiFePO4 (LFP). Through nozzles of 30 μm in diameter, the printer deposited the inks onto the teeth of two gold combs, creating a tightly interlaced stack of anodes and cathodes. The researchers
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MRS BULLETIN
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VOLUME 38 • SEPTEMBER 2013
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pulsed laser deposition on a nonmagnetic, single crystalline carrier crystal (YAlO3). Normally, single crystalline LuMnO3 with an orthorhombic structure exhibits an antiferromagnetic order where two spins always point in one direction, and the next two in the opposite direction (E-type antiferromagnet). In this study, however, a ferromagnetic order (where all spins point in the same direction) was observed in the direct vicinity of the surface of the carrier crystal. “Normally, you can’t convert an antiferromagnet into a ferromagnet—for reasons of symmetry apart from anything else. Something special must have happened here,” said Christof Schneider, one of the researchers involved at PSI. As reported in the July 19 issue of Physical Review Letters (DOI: 10.1103/ PhysRevLett.111.037201), the most likely explanation for the effect is that the crystal structure of the material becomes distorted because it adapts to the structure of the carrier crystal and is therefore highly strained. The ferromagnetic order
found that LTO and LFP inks produced with respective solids loadings of 57 wt% and 60 wt% yielded the desired rheological and printing behavior. The research team then packaged the electrodes into a tiny container and filled it with an electro
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