A lot of activity is going on at the Uppsala University in Sweden, because the scientists there, have an invented a new kind of rechargeable battery that behaves just like paper. To create this extremely thin and flexible battery, the credit would go to nano-engineered plastics and a new kind of cellulose that is obtained from green algae that give the battery its cheap and flexible design. The scientists of the Uppsala University visualize a world with dispensable electronics, where you can have clothes built with all the communication peripherals and will barely be noticeable or cards that light up with digital messages, like ‘congratulations’ or ‘happy birthday’.

Introducing this new battery technology will have manifold applications. The aim of these scientists was to create a battery without any metal parts without having to compromise on the capacity and charging ability and also while being cheap and environment friendly.

For this they looked at something called conductive polymers.

One similar type of material is the polypyrole (Ply), by coating this over a large surface area in a nano-thin layer about 1/ 50,000th the width of human hair, the charging and capacity receives a tremendous boost. The base layer was the new cellulose obtained form green algae, which is actually paper but only 100 times more porous. This gives it the ability to hold and release electricity more effectively. The batteries electrodes are basically normal filter papers drenched in a saturated salt solution. This makes the paper battery very quickly rechargeable and hence is best suited for on the go kind of electronics. The future is indeed being unwrapped, one fold at a time.

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