The new stretchable and bendable battery provides power for smart wearable devices
Published time: 2017-9-7 7:05:11, Publisher:
The battery life of the smart wearable devices becomes a major factor affecting the use experience. Smart watch batteries and other electronic components crowded in a narrow space behind the screen, not only occupy most of the available space, and the energy is also very limited, after frequent use, power can only be maintained for several hours. Engineering Professor of flexible batteries from Arizona State University School Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering institute given the solution for this problem, they found a stretchable and bendable battery, which can extend the standby time of electronic devices，such as smart watches.
By applying a Japanese hand-folded technique, researchers have found that they can make conventional lithium-ion batteries stretchable and bendable, and then better put into strap, get more storage space. Combine this technology with standard manufacturing processes creates more suitable batteries for a variety of other wearable devices, such as smart bracelet which tracking health-related data.
Researchers use their researched folded battery to charge the smart phone, the results show that this battery can be built into the elastic strap, and the bendable, extensible shape do not affect battery performance at all. In order to make the battery shape fits more wearable devices, researchers decided to use paper cutting technology, after added to the cutting technology, the results show that horizontal cutting of each material layer can make the battery to stretch and bend any state that you need, unlike the hand-folded technique, rotation at the cutting allows the battery to stretch and fold without affecting its thickness.
In addition to showing the performance of the battery in smart watch, researchers also tested the performance of the battery in multi-turn extrusion and tension, experiments show that the process of repeated winding doesn't lead to fracture phenomenon. Paper cutting technology is also applicable to other types of electronic equipment other than batteries, such as sensors and super capacitors.
