The brick becomes a “power bank”? 3 bricks to keep the LED light on for 10 minutes. You read that right, this brick can light up the LED lights.
It is this kind of ordinary red brick that is very inconspicuous, which can be bought for less than a dollar. Maybe it can become a “power bank” in the future?
Recently, the D’Arcy Laboratory of Washington University in St. Louis published a new study that found that bricks, the most basic building material, can even store electricity.
The reconstructed red brick can be connected to the power supply to recharge 10,000 times, and after a single charge, three 4×3×1 cm bricks can power the green LED lights for about 10 minutes (as shown in the figure above). Although it seems that the amount of electricity stored by bricks is negligible, the addition of more metal oxides in the future will greatly improve its electricity storage performance, which may bring inspiration to the design of energy storage building materials.
The research was published in the journal Nature Communications.
Paper link:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-17708-1
Rust can also be used to store energy
Julio D’arcy, assistant professor of chemistry at Washington University in St. Louis and the corresponding author of the paper, said, “We have created a new type of brick that can be built in your house with the function of storing electricity.” He added: “We think , It is not difficult to realize sensor application on these bricks.”
For many years, D’arcy and his colleagues have been experimenting with rust, which is a ubiquitous red film, mainly composed of molten particles of silica (SiO2), alumina (Al2O3) and hematite (α-Fe2O3)2 composition. It will form on any structure that contains iron.
Rust is generally considered a harmful corrosive substance, but D’arcy’s team has shown that rusty iron oxide has useful properties for materials science.
D’arcy explained: “If you treat rust chemically, it will actually react.” “So, what we usually think of as waste is actually a useful chemical substance that can be used to produce energy storage materials. “
The pigment part of the red brick comes from rust, which prompted researchers to further study the structural characteristics of the bricks to see if they can be transformed into a kind of energy storage device called “supercapacitor”.
The complex porosity inside the brick is an ideal space for introducing a complex polymer coating. The polymer coating reacts with rust to increase the surface area and conductivity of the brick.
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