Batteries

Blue Spark Technologies, the leading supplier of thin, flexible, eco-friendly printed batteries, announced it has opened a new high-volume printing and production facility located in West Bend, Wisconsin.

This week, Printed Electronics World visited Mr Etsuo Nakagawa and Mr Kiichiro Ito of JNC Corporation (parent company Chisso) in Japan. JNC Corporation manufactures worldwide and that includes structural plastics and Li-ion battery materials for electric vehicles. In printed electronics, it is about to sell RFID inlays with a secret new antenna deposition process on plastic film.

The Paper Battery Company has been selected to receive a $1 million award.

According to the World Bank, 1.6Bn people, over one fifth of the world's population, lack access to electricity via a grid and pay high prices for kerosene to serve basic needs such as lighting. Solar lamps and phone chargers have been available for some time but the initial cost is beyond the reach of many potential users. Now Eight19, a developer and manufacturer of printed plastic solar technology has an inexpensive pay-as-you-go, personal solar electricity system for the developing world.

World's first energy-storage membrane outstrips existing rechargeable batteries and supercapacitors.

University of Leeds scientists have invented a new type of polymer gel that can be used to manufacture cheaper lithium batteries without compromising performance.

PragmatIC Printing Ltd, the pioneer in imprinted logic circuits, and De La Rue plc, the world's largest integrated commercial security printer and papermaker, announced that they are working together on prototypes for printed electronic security products.

Stanford transparent batteries: seeing straight through to the future?

Light Tape UK announces the launch of the new portable, quick recharge, compact, battery units to drive the Light Tape® product in its various portable applications. The new units have been specifically developed to address the existing limitations associated with driving Light Tape using portable battery technology

mPhase Technologies has been granted a United States patent for the unique concept of a smart battery design that could contain different battery chemistries within the same battery configuration or battery pack.

The efforts of a Holst Centre and NXP collaboration were presented last month in the form of the CoolBioTM. This low power biomedical signal processor is designed to efficiently monitor essential body parameters during the patients' daily lives at home.

This advanced battery technology has three times the energy density of current li-ion batteries, costing less than half the price per kilowatt-hour.

Electron switch between molecules points way to new high-powered organic batteries

T Rohrs brings more than 30 Years of semiconductor, energy and technology management experience to Skyline; Bob MacDonald to remain as CTO

Inauguration of 1.3 megawatt solar-power-plant on top of production facility / Manufacturing, power generation and recycling all under one roof in Frankfurt.

MIT team finds that using carbon nanotubes in a lithium battery can dramatically improve its energy capacity

Enfucell & SoftBattery featured by Reader's Digest around the globe

Toppan Forms, a leading information management solution provider, will start to test market product applications by combining various printed electronics technologies. Unlike conventional electronics, printed electronics are not rigid and can be converted into different shapes and sizes. Innovative products such as a battery charger in the shape of brief case or POP displays for marketing can be customarily designed and manufactured. Test marketing will start this summer and full scale marketing is expected to start in 2011.

Holst Centre and others are working on body area networking to monitor vital signs, control drug delivery according to need and otherwise progress towards bionic man and woman and care of the disabled and elderly. Unfortunately cutting into your body to change batteries brings with it a significant percentage of mortalities, not just pain and infection. Energy harvesting within the body is potentially helpful but biobatteries and thermoelectric generators provide only weak amounts of electricity in such applications.

170 years ago, Faraday appreciated the different electrical properties of nano gold over bulk metal in electrical devices, so applying nanotechnology to these things is scarcely new. However, the huge sums now being applied to improvement of lithium traction batteries in particular are now leading to work on a much larger scale and thin film technology, nanotechnology and printing are in increasingly important part of this. Potential is considerable. LG of Korea, one of the leaders in traction batteries, forecasts 4.6 million electric cars produced in 2015 and IDTechEx forecasts 3.8 million for that year - hybrid and pure electric. The conference "Lithium Battery Technology and System Development" in London 9 March 2010 was concerned with "breaking barriers for electric vehicles". Professor John Owen of the School of Chemistry at the University of Southampton in the UK described work on interdigitated laminar electrodes to overcome the problems of ionic and polymeric electrolytes that are resistive. His team is involved in a pan European project working on this that involves Swedish, Dutch and French organisations, Varta Battery and St Jude Medical.

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) - self organising, self healing networks of small "nodes" - have huge potential across industrial, military and other many other sectors. While appreciable sales have now been established, major progress depends on standards and achieving twenty year life.

Find out the most exciting advances and applications in the new world of stretchable, invisible, morphable, tightly rollable, edible and other previously impossible electronics.

Enfucell, a Finnish company recognized for its achievements in developing its SoftBattery® technology, has received a 600.000 eur capital injection from its existing and new owners, including Vera Venture and Varma, who have both invested in the company previously.

The first fully printed electronic game card has been developed by Austrian company prelonic.

Researchers have developed a novel, patent-pending process for 'spraying' solar cells and their related components onto glass which could provide significant commercial production advantages over today's thin-films.

Electronics and electrics are becoming ubiquitous, the devices appearing on and in higher and higher volume products including e-labels and e-packaging. This calls for different forms of battery, capacitor and other energy storage because priorities such as environmental credentials, thinness and compatibility with energy harvesting (eg. solar cells) come to the fore alongside life and cost.

Fairchild Semiconductor's MicroFET thin package helps designers avoid compromising their designs by providing them with an industry-leading low profile package. Working with design engineers and procurement managers, Fairchild developed an integrated P-Channel PowerTrench® MOSFET and Schottky diode, as a single-package solution to meet critical efficiency and thermal needs in battery charging and power-multiplexing applications.

A new thin-film paper battery that holds great promise for applications in areas where conventional Li-ion batteries are not the perfect choice has been developed at Uppsala University, Sweden.

Plug in hybrid electric cars are now prioritised by most major car manufacturers. Pure electric on- road cars are prioritised by Nissan and a host of vibrant start up companies, they have one thing in common. The cleverest, most expensive part of their planned vehicles is increasingly the traction battery.

ReVolt Technology applies for $30 million in government research grants accelerating development of innovative zinc-air batteries for vehicles and renewable energy storage.

Power Paper's new business model solidifies company standing as the leading developer of paper thin, flexible and environmentally safe, printable micro-electronic clean technology and patches.

While some involved in OLEDs and OTFTs are moving out of the business of printed and potentially printed electronics, work on inorganic materials and compounds is increasing. The IDTechEx Printed Electronics Asia event in Tokyo will give a balanced view with many presentations being World firsts.

Part II of a beginner's guide to electronic components and how they are made.

The New University of Lisbon presented a new Ion Jelly® material, which combines a biodegradable polymer (gelatin) with an ionic liquid (IL).

A new printed battery that can be produced cost-effectively on a large scale could soon power small integrated displays on electronic bank cards.

There are huge opportunities for companies providing inorganic chemicals to printed and potentially printed electronics. Here, Dr Peter Harrop, Chairman, IDTechEx, summarises some of the findings from the new IDTechEx report "Inorganic and Composite Printed Electronics 2009-2019."

Some of the new electric cars generate at least some of their electric power from solar cells on the vehicle - In future, they may generate electricity in part from shock absorbers, transparent solar cells over windows and thermoelectrically from the engine and exhaust in hybrid.

Over 100 industry executives have already confirmed their participation for Thin Film Today's forthcoming Thin Film Solar Summit Europe, scheduled to take place in Berlin next month.

UPM Raflatac and Blue Spark Technologies partner to drive new battery assisted passive RFID research and product development

Nanotecture has developed microbatteries and supercapacitors aimed at markets such as boosting the flash in mobile phone cameras to take pictures farther away, audio buffering in mobile phones etc for higher quality sound and powered smart cards.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) engineers have created a kind of beltway that allows for the rapid transit of electrical energy through a well-known battery material, an advance that could usher in smaller, lighter batteries for cell phones and other devices that could recharge in seconds rather than hours.

The Fraunhofer Research Institution for Electronic Nano Systems (Chemnitz, Germany) demonstrated their innovative printed battery in Tokyo last month.

Next-generation, ultra-thin rechargeable batteries for micro devices such as smart cards, portable sensors and RFID tags could be used in energy harvesting applications suggest IDTechEx.

A Swedish research centre has been established for intelligent pharmaceutical packaging, smart foods packaging, hospital logistics and patient care.

Is a problem looming in the electronics industry due to some estimates that the demand for lithium will increase three to seven times by 2012?

Laminar batteries are usually having success only where the need for thinness and flexibility is extreme. IDTechEx interview companies at Printed Electronics World USA to find out more.

Vibration energy harvesting is receiving a considerable amount of interest as a means for powering wireless sensor nodes. It is the simple notion that mechanical vibration can be transformed into useful electrical power.

Researchers have developed a new type of small-scale electric power generator able to produce alternating current through the cyclical stretching and releasing of zinc oxide wires encapsulated in a flexible plastic substrate with two ends bonded.

How Printed Electronics is changing consumer goods and services - highlights from the forthcoming Printed Electronics USA event

IDTechEx finalises its report on the Intellipak conference held on 5 November in Sweden