Prototype, pliable power source: Small, bendable battery developed

[madokie]

http://www.tulsaworld.com/business/article.aspx?articleID=070818_5_E4_spanc44780

WASHINGTON -- It's a battery that looks like a piece of paper and can be bent or twisted, trimmed with scissors or molded into any shape needed.

While the battery is only a prototype a few inches square right now, the researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute who developed it have high hopes for it in electronics and other fields that need smaller, lighter power sources.

"We would like to scale this up to the point where you can imagine printing batteries like a newspaper. That would be the ultimate," Robert Linhardt, a professor at the Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies at RPI, said in a telephone interview.

The development is reported in this week's online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.