Unconventional Designs for Soft and Stretchable Organic Batteries

Next-generation electronics will interface intimately with the human body. This requires devices with high degrees of conformability and autonomy, where integrated soft and stretchable batteries are an essential component. However, existing stretchable batteries are predominantly based on unsustainable transition metal-based active materials and use non-biodegradable petroleum-based elastomers. Such batteries cause environmental issues like waste generation upon disposal and the use of finite resources during manufacturing. Further, the mechanical properties of conventional battery designs tend to deteriorate with active material loading, making them too stiff for optimal conformability. To address these issues, here we present the development of several unconventional designs for soft and stretchable organic batteries. Such designs can decouple the electrochemical performance from the mechanical properties and allow for the use of active sustainable bio-based materials. One example is a stretchable and biodegradable organic battery employing sustainable plant-based materials with cellulose as a structural component in the electrode, separator, and current collector, and with redox-active biomaterials for energy storge and a biomass-derived biodegradable elastomer for encapsulation. Our 3D porous scaffold design allows for high mass loadings of redox-active biomolecules, in combination with a low Young’s modulus. The full cell showed reversible electrochemical performance under stretching and is biodegradable.<br/>www.liu.se/en/research/soft-electronics<br/>https://scholar.google.se/citations?user=nI31t3sAAAAJ&hl=sv