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Thin, Flexible Printable Battery For Smartcards

Posted by chrisd on from the don't-hate-me-because-I'm-well-engineered dept.

cornflux writes "This would be a nice way to power a really smart smartcard: Power Paper, Ltd. has created an alkaline-like energy cell that is (among other things) thin, flexible, and "green." Furthermore, it is printable via a silk-screening process onto paper, plastic, and other flexible materials. ABCNEWS.com has the story."

2 of 83 comments (clear)

  1. Horrific Uses by Alien54 · · Score: 4, Insightful
    As noted on other sites, the battery is about half a millimeter thick, and is good enough for all kinds of uses.

    The horror story in my head is that these things get cheap enough to be used to power animated and interactive displays on the boxes you see from products in department stores, etc.

    I have visions of products shouting out to you to "buy me" as you walk down the product aisles. The real world equivalent of banner ads and popup displays.

    --
    "It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
  2. "Smart" Luggage Tags? by cosyne · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Power Paper even envisions that its flexible battery designs can be used to help secure airports and passengers. Luggage tags and airline tickets could be printed with tiny radio antennas and circuitry -- powered by the company's battery -- to contain passenger data.

    Great. Please make sure you seatbacks and traytables are in their full upright and locked positions, all you carryon items have been safely stowed in an overhead bin or under the seat in front of you, and all cellular phones, portable electronics, and luggage tags have been turned off prior to departure.

    Not to mention it's a stupid idea anyway. The tages the airlines put on your bag already have barcodes- if getting them to point in the right direction for the laser scanner is just too difficult, they can easily use RFID (who says they don't already?). There's no reason to have the tag carry a battery unless it's going to display and update information in realtime.