why a rechargeable zinc battery is such a big deal - lithium ion rechargeable battery

Imagine Nike FuelBand, which is just a small ring on your index finger, or a thin, soft phone like a credit card.
If there are thin enough, flexible and powerful batteries to run these gadgets, this thin, small or completely unusual shape may be created.
It turns out that batteries are the main obstacle to modern electronic design.
But in an office park behind Oakland Airport in Alameda, California, a small, bright lab.
A young startup called Imprint Energy is using research from the University of California, Berkeley, to develop such a battery that can free gadget manufacturers from the limitations of standard lithium-ion batteries.
This is the plan anyway.
Use zinc instead of lithium and the screen-
Printing technology, Imprint Energy has been produced in large quantitiesthin, energy-
Dense, flexible, low
Charging batteries for pilot customers.
Devin MacKenzie, ceo of impint Energy, explained in an interview with the startup lab that it is difficult to make standard lithium-ion batteries thin and flexible.
McKenzie said "a lot of packaging" is needed to isolate the high active lithium in the battery from the environment.
If you 've ever seen videos of lithium batteries burning in air or water on YouTube, you know why these barriers are needed.
However, this structure also makes lithium-ion batteries hard and potentially bulky.
Even the slimmest laptops, such as Macbook Air, or tablets like the iPad, face design limitations due to battery size and weight.
Nike FuelBand uses curved (
Called Shape preservation in battery terms)
Lithium polymer battery, but if you look closely at the shape of the strap, the battery is the only part of the bracelet that cannot be bent.
Imprint Energy's battery solves both rigid and bulky problems by throwing away lithium.
The company has 8 employees, founded in 2010 by Berkeley PhD students Christine Ho and Brooks kinkai, who recently raised seed funds from Dow Chemical and CIA fundsQ-Tel.
The company uses zinc as the anode part of the battery, combining it with a solid polymer electrolyte and a cathode made of metal oxides.
The battery consists of an anode on one side and a cathode on the other, with an electrolyte in the middle.
In the case of imprint, the zinc ions move from the anode to the cathode through the electrolyte, generating a chemical reaction that allows the electrons to be harvested along the way.
McKenzie told me that while zinc has been in use for years now, it is difficult to charge the zinc battery.
This is because when zinc is combined with a liquid electrolyte, it produces something called a crystal --
Tiny fibers that grow and hinder the charging reaction.
Imprint Energy solves this barrier by using an electrolyte made of a solid polymer combined with zinc.
The use of zinc means that the "packaging" of the imprint battery may be much less because zinc is not highly reactive to the environment.
In other words, the battery can be made thinner.
They can also be several hundred micrometers thick (
The width of several human hairs).
Small batteries can power tiny digital smart labels like freshness
Detector stickers on food
Zinc also makes Imprint's battery safer and less toxic than lithium
Battery based.
The team at imprint can study zinc batteries outdoors.
Zinc batteries are a safer choice for manufacturing equipmentor even in—the body.
Imagine a lithium battery in a person's chest powering a heart device --
The battery leaks lithium into the human body. Yikes.
Another innovation developed by Imprint Energy is that it uses standard screen printing batteries
Printing technology.
Most batteries are made by coating the material on the foil and then assembling it into a battery.
At the alamida lab at Imprint Energy, CEO McKenzie showed me one of the two labssite battery-
The printing press and all kinds look a bit like t-shirt silk-
Screen screening.
The battery material is printed on the screen like ink in whatever shape the customer needs.
The customer will pay an extra fee for the battery created according to the custom shape of its device.
The company can produce 100 batteries on a laboratory machine every day.
In a world of Asian battery manufacturers, the number is small, but it is large enough to distribute samples to potential customers. Down the road—
Two to three years later.
The imprint will make the manufacturing industry a large-scale business scale.
It may not build its own plant, but will work closely with the manufacturing partner or get a technical license.
While it's still too early for Imprint Energy, the team's ultimate goal is the consumer-facing market for wearable electronics (
Like Nike's FuelBand and FitBit series)
And the Health Department (
Such as embedded display).
The wearable industry can get the most out of the novelty and thin shape of the battery and the use of safer, less batteriesToxic substances. Co-
Founder Kincaid is a wearable device enthusiast.
In the interview, wearing Nike FuelBand on his wrist, he said he was eagerly awaiting the arrival of his unhealthy glow.
For the wearables industry, Imprint Energy's zinc poly battery delivers a new device that is more secluded, streamlined, and versatile.
As wearable electronics is an emerging industry,
It may become more mainstream in the next few years.
Disruptive design will eventually revolutionize the wearable industry.
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