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Printable Batteries Should Arrive Next Year

Posted by timothy on from the return-to-the-goodness-of-aa dept.

FullBandwidth writes "Paper-thin batteries that can be printed onto greeting cards or other flexible substrates have been demonstrated at Fraunhofer Research Institution for Electronic Nano Systems in Germany. The batteries have a relatively short life span, as the anode and cathode materials dissipate over time. However, they contain no hazardous materials."

35 of 92 comments (clear)

  1. Free Energy, woo! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Now we can have an unlimited supply of electrical energy. Just keep photocopying the batteries!

    1. Re:Free Energy, woo! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!

    2. Re:Free Energy, woo! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      That's genius! Then we would use the heat from the photocopier to power other stuff...

    3. Re:Free Energy, woo! by MichaelSmith · · Score: 3, Funny

      If I get stuck in the country with my electric car and no power I could ask somebody to fax me a new battery pack.

      --
      http://michaelsmith.id.au
    4. Re:Free Energy, woo! by oGMo · · Score: 3, Funny

      That's a great idea... I can have my e-book reader power itself!

      --

      Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage

    5. Re:Free Energy, woo! by dna_(c)(tm)(r) · · Score: 4, Funny

      WHOOOOSH

      Excellent idea, while copying the batteries, we could tell complicated jokes and harvest the wind energy when someone misses it!

    6. Re:Free Energy, woo! by kurt555gs · · Score: 2, Funny

      Yes, and HP will sell you battery ink in cartridges for $2200.00 per gallon, just like regular ink jet ink.

      --
      * Carthago Delenda Est *
    7. Re:Free Energy, woo! by peragrin · · Score: 2, Insightful

      batteries are far more useful than ink, therefore it will be $4400.00 per gallon thank you very much. And you will pay because you are suckers.

      me I gave up printers a 8 years ago when i realized I wasted more ink than I used. Now when i do need the rare item printed I take it to work, or use someone else's.

      --
      i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
    8. Re:Free Energy, woo! by zmollusc · · Score: 2, Funny

      No, they will be available as a PDF to _prevent_ you from printing your own.

      --
      They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
    9. Re:Free Energy, woo! by danwesnor · · Score: 3, Funny

      I invented a bullshit-to-electricity generator and plugged it into our PBX, allowing us to run completely off the grid. Unfortunately, it didn't last long, as the device went into a highly recursive feedback mode and imploded when everybody tried to take credit for my work.

    10. Re:Free Energy, woo! by Hurricane78 · · Score: 4, Funny

      Fine. I'll go outside...

      --
      Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
    11. Re:Free Energy, woo! by geekboy642 · · Score: 3, Funny

      Laser printers, meboy! Sure the toner costs $100 for a replacement cartridge, but you can print 5,000 pages with one of 'em. And as a plus, it's got a laser in it! Quiet, fast, cheap...all made possible with the humble laser. Inkjet printers rightfully should be dumped into a hole in the ground.

      --
      Just another "DOJ fascist authoritarian totalitarian bootlicker" -- Zeio
    12. Re:Free Energy, woo! by mlts · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You are right: I would say that inkjet printers do have a far cheaper upfront cost. One store would even give me a low end inkjet when I bought 2 ink cartridges that totalled over $50.

      However, for the $30 an inkjet cartridge costs, I get about 100-200 pages. For the $65 a toner cartridge to a very low end HP laser printer, I can get 2500 or so pages, more if I bother to shake the toner cartridge. There is a big difference between three cents a page and 10-20 cents a page. To boot, with a laser printer, there is no streaking, no clogged nozzles, no wasting of ink on clean cycles, and no waste of ink. I can either use a laser printer once a month, or once a day. The toner will be used at the same rate, compared to ink which dries up and has to be cleaned off the heads.

      Best results? Have both. I have an all in one inkjet I use for photo printing because it can print to photo paper. I also have a black and white laser printer for larger jobs.

  2. Fantastic! by tsa · · Score: 3, Funny

    Now we can have cards with OLED displays that can show a message delived by you in person, via a video! Quite cool, I think.

    --

    -- Cheers!

    1. Re:Fantastic! by moniker127 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      If you have an extra 500 bucks laying around to spend on a one time use card, go nuts.
      You could just get your significant other a netbook with a video file on it, captain yesterday. :P

  3. Aging and leakage by BadAnalogyGuy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The biggest problem with aging materials is their propensity to leak. Take your mother, for example. When I first met her, she was in her 60's and had an ass like a drum. But after a decade of giving her the old backdoor to and fro, she now leaks like a sieve. I'd recommend taking her to get fitted for a colostomy bag, but that's your family's business, not mine.

    So too with batteries. As they age and rust, the internal chemicals are liable to leak and cause serious harm to the environment. There really isn't any good way to dispose of these batteries that doesn't come at great cost or cause chemical contamination.

    This development using organic compounds and no harmful lead or mercury is a godsend for those of us in the environmental movement. It has been a source of great consternation that greeting cards and other miniature throw-away gadgets have contained batteries with harmful chemicals, and now that seems to be a thing of the past.

    It also has the side effect of making the card itself less bulky, so not only are you saving the environment by not polluting the groundwater, you're saving precious resources by buying products made of lighter materials.

    1. Re:Aging and leakage by pitterpatter · · Score: 2, Informative

      From TFA:

      Fraunhofer's batteries use zinc anodes and manganese cathodes, which react with one another to produce electricity.

      My copy of the CRC Handbook does not list zinc and manganese as organic compounds. Do I need to upgrade my library?

      While I agree that these elements do not currently have the bad press enjoyed, probably quite deservedly, by lead and mercury, I'm reminded of the calomel taken as the primary medical treatment by the Lewis and Clark expedition. Scientific thought 200 years ago pointed to mercury as a cure for almost anything that ailed you. Times do change.

      Make no mistake, I think that having printable batteries using zinc and manganese is a wonderful thing. I just want to point out that those of you in the environmental movement can be counted on to find something wrong with this technology too, if it becomes popular.

    2. Re:Aging and leakage by Sir_Lewk · · Score: 3, Funny

      The biggest problem with aging materials is their propensity to leak. Take your mother, for example. When I first met her, she was in her 60's and had an ass like a drum. But after a decade of giving her the old backdoor to and fro, she now leaks like a sieve. I'd recommend taking her to get fitted for a colostomy bag, but that's your family's business, not mine.

      BadAnalogyGuy, you are officially my hero.

      --
      "linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
    3. Re:Aging and leakage by bhima · · Score: 2, Interesting

      My expectation is that the only way batteries are going to able to really compete with liquid fuels as an energy storage mechanism for vehicles is through some sort of comprehensive and mandatory recycling program. And I'm not just talking about just the actual batteries but rather a complete infrastructure and financing system which makes it difficult and expensive to ignore, opt-out or avoid. Otherwise, the whole thing will be an expensive and short lived boondoggle.

      Having said that, I'd love to be able to build a 3D printing machine that could produce batteries and fuel cells.

      --
      Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
    4. Re:Aging and leakage by PopeRatzo · · Score: 2, Funny

      My copy of the CRC Handbook does not list zinc and manganese as organic compounds. Do I need to upgrade my library?

      Your CRC handbook isn't thinking outside the box.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    5. Re:Aging and leakage by Timosch · · Score: 3, Funny

      When I first met her, she was in her 60's and had an ass like a drum.

      Daddy, is that you?

  4. Re:Duration by raving+griff · · Score: 3, Informative

    The idea is that these batteries will only be used for items that need very little battery power, like cards with audio greetings or to light signs announcing yard sales, parties, etc, that will only need to be lit for a day or two.

  5. Old news (and semi-dupe) by FST · · Score: 4, Informative

    Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute did this already, as mentioned in this article from a couple years back.

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    1. Re:Old news (and semi-dupe) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Well there's a few differences between the two. Rensselaer's invention was largely based on cellulose whereas the Fraunhofer battery is a matter of zinc and manganese. While the Rensselaer battery actually seemed to be paper (and had the capability to be stacked to produce more power) the Fraunhofer battery seems to be "paper-thin" instead of actual paper. Also, based on the article, I find it unlikely the stacking for additional power output would work.

      Further, Rensselaer said they weren't able to figure out a cheap way to mass produce. According to the article, the Fraunhofer battery seems to be fairly cheap already if they're "aiming at a price point under 10 cents per card" instead of a generic "We gotta make it cheaper."

      They're similar technologies if all you think of it is "it's a thin battery", but in actuality are nowhere near the same.

  6. Imagine a stack of 'em by Elledan · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm willing to bet that it'll take less than a week before some enterprising geek manages to collect about a million of these batteries and makes a big battery pile out of them to create the most powerful printed battery. Why? Because it's possible :D

    (and it'll be posted on this site and we'll all be gawking at it and making jokes about Beowulf clusters of batteries, ad infinitum, ad nauseam)

    --
    Site & blog: http://www.mayaposch.com
    1. Re:Imagine a stack of 'em by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Informative

      It'll be interesting to see whether he kills himself doing so or not. Batteries(of any standard chemistry, there might be something exotic out there) in parallel are pretty much harmless to any human who hasn't been flayed and dipped in graphite; but put enough of them together in series and you can get a pretty zesty high voltage DC source(youtube and friends are infested with videos of people playing with large quantities of 9-volts, they conveniently clip together in long chains for the purpose).

      Not a huge surprise if you think about it; but anybody who thinks "Batteries = safe, Mains = dangerous" might be in for a surprise if they try on a large enough scale...

    2. Re:Imagine a stack of 'em by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Some references would probably be in order: Here are 52 in series. This is 160(warning, listening at nonzero volume might make you wish that the experiment had been less survivable...)

      On the plus side, the ability of a 9 volt to deliver high currents isn't all that hot(compared to, say, a microwave transformer) so you'd be less likely to suffer massive damage from thermal effects, unless the lot caught fire. A similarly long chain of lead acid batteries would be substantially nastier in that regard.

    3. Re:Imagine a stack of 'em by dkf · · Score: 2, Informative

      On the plus side, the ability of a 9 volt to deliver high currents isn't all that hot(compared to, say, a microwave transformer) so you'd be less likely to suffer massive damage from thermal effects, unless the lot caught fire. A similarly long chain of lead acid batteries would be substantially nastier in that regard.

      That's because the 9 volt battery (deliberately) has quite a lot of internal resistance. Makes it much safer if there is an external short, at a cost of limiting it to low-current applications.

      --
      "Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
    4. Re:Imagine a stack of 'em by kimvette · · Score: 5, Funny

      I did something REALLY stupid when I was about 10 years old. I knew enough about parallel vs. series battery piles to be dangerous. Did you ever lick a 9V battery to see if it was good? If you got a really painful sting, it was good, and if it didn't hurt, it was probably too dead to run the game? Well, have you ever tried connecting 20 of those in series, making a pigtail and licking the conductors to see if it worked? I did. I learned a very quick lesson about that. I saw a flash of light and was dazed for a little while. I'm embarrassed to admit that here, but hey, I was only about 10 years old. Yep, I've always been a bit of a geek like that. That year I learned a lot of lessons: why a lot of batteries wired in series can be as dangerous as mains (my first mishap with electricity was when I was about five years old where the batteries in my pinball machine went dead so I made a cord to plug it into the mains - I fried both the outlet and the pinball machine internals), I learned why one should check the flyback circuit cables to make sure there is NO dry rot when working on internals a live (CRT) TV (or end up with a numb arm if there is a crack in the line and the screwdriver goes near it), why a magneto on a motorbike engine should not be played with while it's running. Those lessons were painful! :-D

      --
      The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
  7. Re:Duration by davester666 · · Score: 5, Funny

    So, you can record "I hate you, you fucking bitch" on a greeting card, and it plays the first time she opens it, then the battery runs out and the audio is lost, so she can't get a restraining order based on it...

    --
    Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
  8. Re:Duration by houghi · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That would be GOOD news. The bad part is that you will buy magazines and every other page the adds will shout at you.

    --
    Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
  9. These guys would be really surprised... by dtmos · · Score: 3, Informative

    Power Paper. Screen-printed zinc-manganese batteries on paper and polymer substrates are at least ten years old. (They're not the only supplier, either.)

  10. Re:Duration by Nerdfest · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Actually, wouldn't this sort of battery make a letter bomb a lot harder to detect?

  11. This exists now in the U.S. by Jon+Abbott · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Infinite Power Solutions is already making a thin-film lithium ion battery that is extremely rechargeable. No need to wait for this technology!

    --
    Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
  12. Prior Art by eonlabs · · Score: 3, Informative

    Power Paper has been producing printable battery tech for YEARS

    http://www.powerpaper.com/home.php

    Surprisingly, they've taken it into the cosmetics business.

    Who wants to find another wheel we can reinvent.

    --
    I wouldn't consider the mad hatter mad. Just reality impaired. He sure can make a mean cup of tea.