DÖLF BARBEN What is it? To be honest, it looks a bit underwhelming. Like something a child has stuck together: a small cutout figure with a dark coat and two tiny antennas. Reality tells a different story. What resembles a scrap of paper is in fact a battery that was invented and developed in Switzerland, at the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, Empa – an object so remarkable that it made it on to the 2022 list of the world’s best inventions. Published annually by the US magazine “Time”, the Best Inventions list honours “200 innovations changing how we live”, as the jury puts it. The list covers all manner of inventions. These include a smart water sprinkler, a heat-free hairdryer, a powerful smartphone microscope, and the James Webb Space Telescope. And hidden away in the “Experimental” category? The small, inconspicuous and slightly tatty-looking Swiss paper battery. You can tell how well Empa’s invention was received, because the jury chose not to group it together with the technical gadgets – like the streaming headphones that you can wear underwater, or the on-the-go baby bottle warmer. Nor did they list it under the fun stuff like the indoor The wood magician and his amazing strip of paper How a tiny battery made in Switzerland ended up on the list of the world’s best inventions. garden for beginners or the teddy bear that hugs back. Like the Covid breathalyser test and the new NASA space rocket, the paper battery was one of the few innovations referred to by the jury as “breakthrough” inventions. A sliver of paper mentioned in the same breath as a space rocket – remarkable. As the “Time” magazine website says, the paper battery is an invention aimed at reducing e-waste. Not only is the paper biodegradable, but so are the battery’s other components. Hence the battery is not just a breakthrough – but an environmental breakthrough. Gustav Nyström and his team created it. The Swedish-born Nyström has headed the Cellulose & Wood Materials Laboratory at Empa since 2018. Cellulose is the main substance in the wall of plant cells and, like wood, a sustainable biomaterial. Nyström studied the conductive qualities of natural materials for his PhD. This was how he soon came up with the idea of a biodegradable electricity storage device. He found the ideal work environment at Empa “because renewable and sustainable materials and solutions inform everything we do here”, he says. The title of an article dedicated to Nyström on the Empa website refers to him as the “wood magician”. Certainly, Empa is no longer simply the “Building Materials Testing Institute”, as it was initially called when it was founded in 1880. In recent decades, the organisation has developed into a multi-branch research hub. It sees its core mission as carrying out solution-oriented research – for industry, but also for society. Nyström himself is keen to stress the social dimension more than anything else. Although he is a physicist, he talks more like an environmental scientist. He will happily explain how Higher, farther, faster, more beautiful? In search of somewhat unconventional Swiss records This edition: The new biodegradable paper battery It looks a bit like a piece of cobbled together handicraft (held here in a pair of tweezers) but was named one of the world’s best inventions in 2022. Photo: Empa Swiss Review / March 2023 / No.2 14 Report
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