Paper-thin pundits: The nanotech paper battery developed in the U.S. — and the Indians behind the breakthrough. (Top) Ajayan, Nalamasu, and Murugesan. (Bottom) Manikoth, Pushparaj, and Kumar. (Prof. Ajayan is in green shirt)

Bangalore: Researchers — most of them Indians — at the oldest technological university in the United States, have announced a breakthrough that might see ultra-thin batteries, made up of cellulose, the main component of paper.

Using nanotechnology — the science of the very small — the faculty and students of three departments at the Rensselaer Polytehnic in Troy, New York State, have created a flexible device, 90 per cent of which is composed of cellulose, the same plant cells used in newsprint. They infused this material with a nanotechnology material called carbon nanotubes, which acts as the plus and minus terminals of the battery and allow the device to store electricity. It can also be used as a capacitor to store a charge.
The device can be rolled, twisted, folded, cut ... and holds out the hope that, when the process is refined, batteries can be ‘printed’ in continuous rolls just as one prints paper in a printing press.

The findings are being reported in the August 21 issue of the “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,” in the United States. The three department heads who joined hands on the project are Pulickel M. Ajayan, Professor of Materials Science and team leader of the carbon nanotechnology research centre at Rensselaer; Robert Linhardt, Professor of Biocatalysis and Metabolic Engineering; and Omkaram Nalamasu, Director of the Centre for Integrated Engineering.

Professor Ajayan did his B.Tech. in Metallurgy, at Banaras Hindu University in 1985, before moving to the U.S. and obtaining his Ph.D in Materials Sciences at Northwestern University.