Slimming things down in the battery world

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Enfucell Ltd.

www.enfucell.com

Have you ever asked yourself why conventional batteries are so bulky and why they often seem to make the products they power bulky as well? Enfucell’s innovative SoftBattery® is just the opposite. It’s thin, flexible, and eco-friendly.

Enfucell’s SoftBattery^® represents a new generation of battery technology and offers a completely new level of performance in terms of compact dimensions and cost efficiency. It does this by using printing and lamination technology, rather than conventional battery technology.

The size and shape of a SoftBattery^® can be selected very flexibly, and units can even be supplied on a roll, just like labels – with the difference that these ‘labels’ power things too. The current range includes both 1.5 and 3 V power sources, working at temperatures from -35 °C to +50 °C.

The thin profile, flexibility, and good environmental credentials of Enfucell’s SoftBattery® make it an ideal power source for things like RFID tags, microsensors, transdermal patches, and functional packaging.

SoftBattery^® power sources can be used in a very wide range of applications and locations where conventional battery technology does not really deliver. Potential applications include RFID and sensor-based tags, cosmetics and pharmaceutical applications, such as transdermal delivery patches, electronic printing, and functional packaging.

An RFID tag with a sensor powered by a SoftBattery^® could be used to monitor human functions or detect toxic substances in the air, for example.

In the health care area, SoftBattery^® technology has the potential to make a valuable contribution in speeding up the penetration of drug molecules through the skin, making treatment faster and more efficient. Battery-assisted wound healing patches are also a potentially attractive area for Enfucell’s technology.

Compared to conventional dry cell batteries and the heavy metals they contain, Enfucell SoftBattery^® is both more cost-effective and more environmentally friendly. Thanks to its eco-design approach, the environmental load of a SoftBattery^® is equivalent to that of normal household waste.

Paper-thin green technology

Founded in 2002, Enfucell really began to make headlines in 2007, when it became the first Finnish company to receive a prestigious Technology Pioneer award at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

In addition to inclusion in The Guardian/LibraryHouse CleanTech 100 in 2008, Enfucell has also been highlighted by Red Herring as one of the 100 most promising technology companies in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Enfucell’s CTO and one of the five founders of the company, Dr. Xia-Chang Zhang, was nominated among the world’s 10 most influential Chinese in 2007 by a Chinese media consortium led by Phoenix TV.

Today, Enfucell has operations in Finland, the US, and France, and plans to open an office in the Asia/China region to give it a foothold in major markets with large potential for SoftBattery^® technology. Enfucell^® and SoftBattery^® are registered trademarks.

(Published in HighTech Finland 2010)