Printable Batteries Should Arrive Next Year

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."

Comments

Free Energy, woo!

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Free Energy, woo!

[Anonymous Coward]

In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!

Re:Free Energy, woo!

[dna_(c)(tm)(r)]

WHOOOOSH

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

Re:Free Energy, woo!

[Hurricane78]

Fine. I'll go outside...

Old news (and semi-dupe)

[FST]

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

Re:Old news (and semi-dupe)

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Imagine a stack of 'em

[Elledan]

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)

Re:Imagine a stack of 'em

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

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...

Re:Imagine a stack of 'em

[kimvette]

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

Re:Duration

[davester666]

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...

Re:Duration

[houghi]

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