Researchers from ITMO University, Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University and Ioffe Institute have created a method for manufacturing lithium-ion batteries with an inkjet printer, creating light and flexible batteries. These batteries power laptops, smartphones and tablets. With this method the battery electrode thickness is reduced by 10 to 20 times, opening the door for new possibilities in compact electronics manufacturing.
Flexible lithium ion batteries are important in developing flexible electronics.
Customers want light and compact devices, but they also want to watch content on the largest screen possible. One way to tackle this issue is to create flexible devices. Standard lithium-ion batteries will need replacement or a change to a flexible device to become a reality.
Battery size and capacity is important when creating a device. It determines how heavy it will be, how long a smartphone will operate before needing a charge and even how far an electric car will go. Today’s manufacturing methods to produce lithium-ion batteries do not allow for the weight or size of a battery to be changed without a loss in battery capacity.
The team has proposed that manufacturers print flexible lithium-ion batteries using an inkjet printer. This method would reduce the thickness of a cathode by 10 to 20%. They created an ink allowing an inkjet printer to print cathodes.
This method can reduce the size and weight of a battery while maintaining capacity. The new cathode layer printed with an inkjet printer is five micrometers thick. Current methods use cathode materials that are about 50 micrometers thick. Printing ultra-thin current collectors with a cathode material allows the team to create flexible batteries that do not deform when dented.
A paper on this technology was published in Energy Technology.
