With the increasing market presence of flexible electronics, there is a clear need for a flexible battery to power them. Fraunhofer ENAS (Chemnitz, Germany; www.enas.fraunhofer.de) recently demonstrated such a battery at Nano Tech 2009 in Tokyo.

Matt Brennesholtz
Insight Media Analyst

The basic battery produces 1.5V and 10mA-Hr of output. The cost estimate per cell is ¥10 (approx US$0.10) per cell. According to ENAS, series connections of printed batteries are possible for the first time, thus enabling printed batteries with integer multiples of 1.5 V, i.e. 3V, 4.5V or 6V, at a cost of integer multiples of ¥10. The battery technology is zinc-manganese, which can be considered environmentally friendly since it contains no cadmium or mercury. The battery is targeted at disposable electronics.

The printed batteries are especially suited for thin and flexible products. Applications suggested by ENAS include intelligent chip and sensor cards, medical patches for transdermal medication and vital signs monitoring, as well as lab on chip analyses. The battery is currently undergoing field trials and commercial products are expected using the battery in Q4′09.

At the same trade show, the Organic Electronics Association (OE-A), a working group within VDMA, demonstrated a variety of other flexible, printed electronics all developed by companies belonging to the association. In the OE-A booth, PolyIC demonstrated a RFID tag equipped with an organic TFT circuit, a flexible battery and an OLED panel.

Printed batteries are expected to become big business. According to a forecast from NanoMarkets (www.nanomarkets.net), the printed batteries market will surpass $2.1 billion by 2015. They expect most of these batteries to be used in RFID tags. Smartcards and sensors are seen as additionally important but smaller markets.

Multiple companies are involved in printed batteries and displays powered by printed batteries. For example, last November at CARTES 2008 in Paris, Blue Spark Technologies, a manufacturer of flexible printed batteries partnered with NTERA, a developer of flexible, all-printed color changing displays, to demonstrate the world’s lowest voltage battery-display system. CARTES is a tradeshow for the $12 billion smart-card industry. The NTERA electro-chromic display technology only requires 1.5V drive, a good match for the 1.5V output from the Zinc-Manganese Dioxide chemistry used by Blue Spark.

Insight Media, along with everyone else, sees a good future for printed and other thin batteries and displays. Smart card anyone?