Public Funding for Zinergy UK Limited

Zinergy UK, a Cambridge based company, developing printed and flexible batteries joins forces with NPL, a world-leading centre of excellence that provides cutting-edge measurement science to tackle Zinergy's technical challenges and to develop a rechargeable battery product more rapidly. Zinergy's environmentally friendly and safe battery chemistry combined with rechargeability will be an enabler for green Internet of Things applications to improve user wellbeing and experience.

Thin and printed Zinergy batteries are designed to provide a cost-effective and flexible power solution for the Internet of Things. In collaboration with the National Physical Laboratory, this project will allow us to enhance the shelf life of our batteries and exploit our technology in various applications which require a long-lasting flexible form of power, ranging from body patches for sensing or drug delivery to smart cards and many more.

no public description

The recent boom in wearable and Internet of Things technology, such as smart sensors, fitness watches, has not yet reached its full potential due to one component restricting further development: the battery source. As a result, devices often have bulky batteries, must be plugged in frequently or use workarounds such as spare batteries, fast charging or smart software. State-of-the-art flexible batteries, such as lithium-ion, vacuum-deposited lithium, or zinc batteries each have their advantages and disadvantages. Lithium-ion batteries are cheap to produce, but relatively thick and do not have high power suitable for some wearable or smart packaging applications. Lithium batteries can be very thin, but are more expensive, and have even less energy capacity than lithium-ion. Zinc batteries are very cheap, have a higher energy capacity than lithium-ion, but are only suitable for low power. These constraints all limit the flexibility and form-factor (shape) of batteries for devices. Furthermore, lithium-ion, lithium and zinc batteries utilise carbon collectors and electrodes which, although contributing to the batteries' light weight, limits their electrical conductivity. Replacing the carbon parts with metal would increase the conductivity (and hence power) but crucially increases corrosion that results from the chemical reactions within the battery. This limits the battery power and life time. The **FLEXIBAT** project will develop a novel single-use battery for electronic wearables and Internet of Things devices, based on zinc-carbon chemistry and metal collectors. The focus of the development is on a special corrosion protective layer for the metal collectors and electrodes using graphene, which will enable a thinner, more flexible and a higher energy battery. We will ultimately develop a technology demonstrator prototype of the full battery system and test it in a controlled environment. To successfully achieve this, the project consortium features the relevant expertise for making the battery, including battery manufacture, materials development, graphene coating, and flexible integrated circuit development and manufacture.

Printed Zinergy batteries are designed to provide a cost-effective and flexible power solution for the Internet of Things. The flexibility of our batteries is a result of our know-how in electrode ink formulation and their printing as thin film electrodes with high performance and robustness. In collaboration with the National Physical Laboratory, this project will allow us to enhance the performance of our batteries not only electrochemically (energy and power capacity) but also mechanically (thickness, flexibility and robustness). This will allow us to exploit our technology in various applications which require a flexible form of power, ranging from body patches for sensing or drug delivery to smart cards and many more.

Picture a band-aid. Visualise how thin, flexible and light it is. How it adapts its shape to your body and how reassuring and seamless it feels to have it on. Now imagine that band-aid is a personal well-being monitor with sensors measuring health and environmental parameters and the capacity to communicate wirelessly with the wearer and the carer when a potential risk situation is detected. Technology development in energy systems and sensing electronics is finally at a point where the development of the product described can be made a reality. Enter: RE-Patch. This project is focused on developing a low-cost smart wearable biomedical patch powered by an ultra-thin and flexible energy source. Two UK companies have partnered to achieve this by miniaturising an existing biomedical patch- developed and patented by one of the partnering companies- and integrating an energy system that includes a thin and flexible battery and a supercapacitor –developed and patented by the second partner.