Researchers develop sugar battery that could power your next cellphone

Virginia Tech researchers have developed a way to replace your traditional batteries with cheaper, refillable, and biodegradable ones.

Sugar batteries aren’t a new phenomenon, but these new ones cooked up by Associate Professor Y.H. Percival Zhang at the Virginia Tech College of Engineering have an energy density that’s an order of magnitude higher than others so it can run longer before needing to be refueled.

Zhang believes that the new battery could be running in some of your cellphones, tablets, and video games in as soon as three years.

“Sugar is a perfect energy storage compound in nature,” Zhang said. “So it’s only logical that we try to harness this natural power in an environmentally friendly way to produce a battery.”

Like typical fuel cells, the sugar battery combines fuel (in this case, maltodextrin, which comes from starch) and air to generate electricity.

What makes the sugar battery different from other fuel cells, such as hydrogen and direct methanol cells, is that the fuel sugar is not explosive or flammable and has a high storage density. Also, the fuels used to build it are biodegradable.

One more perk: The battery is refillable, so sugar can be added to it the same way you fill a printer cartridge with ink.

Visit Virginia Tech for more information.