Jennifer Lewis, senior author of a recent 3D printing study, who is also the Hansjörg Wyss Professor of Biologically Inspired Engineering at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) has come up with a way to print lithium-ion microbatteries the size of a grain of sand.

The printed microbatteries could supply electricity to tiny devices in fields from medicine to communications, including many that have lingered on lab benches for lack of a battery small enough to fit the device, yet provide enough stored energy to power them. She printed precisely interlaced stacks of tiny battery electrodes, each less than the width of a human hair.

The results have been published online in the journal Advanced Materials.