Thin, Flexible Printable Battery For Smartcards

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."

Comments

Horrific Uses

[Alien54]

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.

Re:Battery life

[Karma 50]

If my maths is right - 25 hours at standard drain

http://www.powerpaper.com/tech/technology.html

Nominal current 0.1 mA/cm2
Capacity 2.5 mAh/cm2

Shelf life is 2.5 years.

So between 1 day and 2.5 years depending on usage.

Power Supply Cryptanalysis

[burris]

Unfortunately, information about what the smart card is doing is leaked through the power supply. Giving the smartcard it's own internal power supply can help prevent power analysis attacks from the reader itself. By eliminating an input/output, the black box of the smart card can be made that much "blacker."

burris

"Smart" Luggage Tags?

[cosyne]

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.

Thin Film Rechargeable Batteries

[inKubus]

Front Edge Technology supposedly makes the worlds thinnest battery, however. And these are rechargeable.

Their website has the complete specs, power dissapation curves and more.