The new battery should be cheap, easy to manufacture, and environmentally benign, says lead researcher Maria Stromme. She suggests that it might be used to power cheap medical diagnostics devices or sensors on packaging materials or embedded into fabric. "You don't need advanced equipment to make the batteries," Stromme says, "so they could be made on site in developing countries."
The new battery uses a type of rechargeable thin-film design that many other researchers and companies have been working on for several years.
Thin-film batteries typically use solid electrolytes instead of liquid or gel, and their electrodes are typically made of lithium combined with metals such as nickel, cobalt, or manganese. The salt-and-paper battery is an ideal replacement for the lithium ones used in many low-power portable devices, such as wireless sensors, smart cards, medical implants, and RFID tags. "For these applications, the thinner and smaller the battery, the better," says Sara Bradford, an energy and power consultant at Frost & Sullivan.
Thin-film batteries have other attractive features. They have a long shelf life, retaining their charge after being stored for many years, and they can be charged and discharged tens of thousands of times, says Raghu Das, CEO of research company IDTechEX and an expert on printed electronics, "enabling wireless sensors that can last for decades with an appropriate energy harvester attached."
However, only a handful of startups, such as Infinite Power Solutions in Littleton, CO, and Solicore in Lakeland, FL, have generated enough venture backing to bring their batteries to market. Cymbet in Elk River, MN, and Excellatron in Atlanta, GA, are other strong contenders with market-ready technologies. More than four million thin-film batteries will ship this year, according to a May 2009 report by market research firm NanoMarkets.
source:technologyreview
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