Flexible Solid State Battery Developed

Category: Science & Technology
Posted: August 7, 2012 04:06PM
Author: Guest_Jim_*

As technology is shifting away from traditional materials and toward polymers we are creating devices with new properties, like flexible displays. Of course a flexible display is not very useful if the components around it are rigid, which is why researchers have been working to develop a flexible battery system. Those at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) have succeeded with a thin-film lithium-ion design, which overcomes challenges that inhibited flexible lithium-ion batteries in the past.

To create a lithium-ion battery, the cathode has to be heated to a temperature too high for a polymer substrate to survive. The KAIST researchers addressed this by first making the battery on a mica substrate, which can survive the high temperatures. Then by simply delaminating the substrate, the thin film battery was transferred to a flexible polymer substrate.

The researchers are now working on a laser lift-off technology that will be useful for mass production of this battery design. Hopefully this design, or others like it, will help bring flexible electronics to the world.