Photo: gigaom.com
We all know that the next big thing in tech is going to be the wearable devices. The smart watches will be way smarter and lighter. Wearables like Google Glass, Nike Fuel Band and Fitbit are already here. One day there will be smart rings, smart shoes and smart clothing. We will see freshness detector stickers on food, digital smart labels around us. But the batteries that we have now are not going to take us there. A California based startup Imprint Energy is developing ultrathin rechargeable zinc-polymar batteries. With these super flexible batteries the gadget makers will be able to design devices without the constraints that they deal with the lithium batteries now.
Photo: Gigaom
The batteries are based on research that company cofounder Christine Ho began as a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley. In the battery zinc is used for the anode, a proprietary solid polymer for electrolyte and a metal oxide for cathode. Most of the laptops and smartphones are using lithium which is highly reactive with the environment and needs more packaging. This is why the lithium batteries are so bulky. On the other hand zinc is very stable and non toxic. So the zinc based batteries can be much more thin.
Photo: MIT Technology Review
Imprint Energy is recently awarded $6 million in funding from Phoenix Venture Partners and AME Cloud Ventures to further develop its proprietary technology and finance the batteries’ commercial launch.
Here are the Gigaom and MIT Technology Review article on Imprint Energy.