Researchers at The Advanced Materials Innovation Centre in Japan have developed a lithium polymer battery that can be manufactured by printing technology. The battery is flexible and could be used for flexible solar batteries, flexible displays or attached to curved surfaces.
The researchers used a normal sheet-shaped flexible substrate but with a printing technology which enables the manufacture of batteries that are thinner but have an increased surface area. As the batteries are printed using roll-to-roll production, large scale production will be possible at a lower cost and the batteries can also be laminated. The prototype is half a millimetre thick and gives around a 4V output, but information on capacity has not been released.
The battery is being developed as part of a three year research project that will end in March 2011 and during this time the research group plans to improve manufacturing technologies for commercial production, determine potential applications for the battery and calculate battery capacity.
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