Development history and current achievements of printed primary batteries

Since the end of the last century tremendous efforts have been spent to utilize various aspects of printed electronics' components. One aspect in driving electronics is to provide electrical energy for it. The most appropriate way is to employ printing approaches rather than assembly processes for the integration of battery technology. Doing so, the application basically can be fully printed – if all components are printable. Looking for commercial applications, there are already some available on the market: e.g. temperature logger, RFID smart tagging cards, or cosmetic patches. In this paper a review on printed primary batteries is presented and discussed. Since 2007 Fraunhofer ENAS and Chemnitz University of Technology are active in developing and manufacturing printed batteries and applications thereof. Besides the historical sketch also the current achievements are shown and discussed