A rechargeable printed battery with screen printing technologies

Primary printed batteries (unrechargeable single-use) such as zinc-manganese batteries are already available on the market thanks to several companies like Power Paper, KSW-Microtec, Blue spark technologies, Enfucell. However these batteries have a low electric potential and are not rechargeable.

Secondary printed batteries are rechargeable and have been produced during the BASMATI project, a European-funded research project. During the project, several architectures of printed batteries have been developed thanks to screen printing and aerosol jetting printers resulting in batteries with high energy materials. As an example, one prototype manufactured by Varta, CEA Liten and LEITAT during the Basmati project was presented to the OE-A Competition (2017) in the “Best Publicly Funded Project Demonstrator” category that took place during the LOPEC fair. The prototype won the second place of the competition.

This is the first prototype of the project and has a quick self-discharge and the interfaces between printed layers of the battery need to be improved. The next step of the development will be to integrate the BASMATI prototype directly inside a real functioning device.