Printed power sources based on renewable material

Different kinds of disposable power source solutions will be presented in this talk. The main emphasis in the presentation is on enzymatically catalysed thin layer biobatteries or biofuel cells which have been studied at VTT in collaboration with Åbo Akademi University and Aalto University. The biobattery does not contain rare metals as catalysts and it is mainly based on renewable materials, moreover environmentally friendly final products such as gluconic acid and water are produced in the reaction.1, 2 This kind of battery system is capable to produce enough power for RFID tags, medical plasters and other kinds of low-power applications, in which the disposability is a critical factor. Other power source types which will be discussed in the presentation include activated carbon based supercapacitors and different battery concepts based on conducting polymers. Supercapacitors are based on electrochemical double layers of two separated activated carbon coated electrodes. Supercapacitors are typically used together with other battery types to enable momentary need of large current peaks.3 Polyaniline based battery (Pani-battery) is a combination of aluminium anode and freely breathing polyaniline cathode and can produce around 1V open cell voltage. Another polymer based battery, namely salt and paper battery concept, is based on the nanocellulosic binder for chloride doped polypyrrole electrodes and is currently under investigation in collaboration with University of Uppsala.4 Finally, the presentation will discuss printing and other roll-to-roll methods as the mass production method for cost efficient manufacturing of the different power sources