Wow, that's quite something.<p>I really feel the tech around batteries needs particular focus, as the one thing computing technology seems to lag on is battery life - I dream of a time where I can charge my laptop once a year and not have to worry about it otherwise.<p>Perhaps 3D printing of batteries will offer easier iteration on new ideas?
The Lewis lab's main contribution here is the scale and precision of 3D printing. These batteries are not immediately useful (although there are sensors and other electronics that are an order of magnitude smaller than the batteries that power them, and in the future micro-scale batteries could overall reduce the size of these electronics). They are not powerful or robust, but they are precisely assembled. This type of 3D printing will enable future miniaturization of electronics and be especially useful at the interface of electronics and biology. For instance, current 3D printers have resolution several orders of magnitude above the scale of features in tissues. Increasing the resolution of 3D printing enables tissue engineering at a scale similar to actual biological features. Batteries are just a flashy and potentially useful application of this fundamental printing technology.
I wonder how "sturdiness" scales. What happens when you drop or bang a battery with such tiny features? Obviously they are very weak, but they also have very little mass.<p>I generally count on HN to have someone with experience in any given field. Today I call on those with experience scaling structures into the larger micron ranges.
Might not be the right place to post this, but the twitter notification for this article says "300m", I think they made them a bit smaller than that.