Flexible lithium-ion batteries folded using origami techniques can store energy in a smaller area. Candace Chan and her colleagues at Arizona State University in Tempe built batteries on paper by attaching lithium metal oxide electrodes to paper coated with conductive carbon nanotubes.

They folded the paper into layers using the Miura-ori pattern, which has also been used to fold solar panels in space. Energy stored per unit area increased by a factor of 14 over the unfolded paper. Because paper-based batteries do not perform as well as standard lithium-ion batteries, the per-area capacity of the folded battery still falls below that of existing batteries.

The researchers think that other folding algorithms and robot-assisted folding would improve performance.

Nano Lett. http://doi.org/n4d (2013)