We’ve covered our fair share of flexible electronics, but as far as bendability goes, the flexible batteries developed by LG are truly raising the bar by a couple of notches. The Korean company is working on a battery that is shaped like a cable, and can be bent, tied, or even woven into fine sheets with almost no loss in discharge performance.
It’s no secret that the form-factor of today’s portable electronics is severely constrained by the shape of its batteries. Nowadays, manufacturers use the thinness of their devices as the main meter of their technical prowess. Removing the rigidity limitation, along with improvements in flexible display technology, could open entirely new markets and lead to a paradigm shift that will make device design an even more important factor than it is now.
Lately, researchers have tried to build flexible batteries using soft materials—polymer electrolytes, nanometer-sized materials, and flexible current collectors—often sacrificing capacity.
The Korean researchers are trying a completely new approach to develop a battery that is highly scalable, can be manufactured with a wide range of capacities, and is also extremely bendy—so much so that it could be adapted to fit nearly anywhere, freeing designers from the heavy burden of the rigidity constraint. Via LG brings battery flexibility to new heights.
