When I first heard about paper batteries, I was skeptical. I have worked with companies that had batteries on mylar and similar materials, but paper? I was intrigued, so I agreed to speak to Shreefal Mehta, CEO, and Dave Rich, Senior Director, at The Paper Battery Company.
The company started in 2008 and is based in upstate New York (RPI grads). Its vision was roll to roll print production of scalable, flexible, structural sheets of energy storage material. The technique would be producing both battery and supercapacitor (energy and power) material on the same high volume print production line.
It is now developing ultrathin supercapacitor technology that it claims will enhance battery performance in mobile devices and other products that rely on traditional rechargeable lithium batteries. The technology is unique, relatively non-intrusive (just .3mm thick), works with existing battery solutions, and is environmentally friendly. With this scalable technology, energy storage and dispensing can be significantly improved, using a cost- and space-efficient sheet-like product that can easily be designed into a variety of electronic products.
The company saw the trend in embedded devices getting smaller and thinner and running on batteries, so they went off and developed a thin, inexpensive design for a battery. I wondered how good this technology was.
PBC has also announced a partnership with leading battery pack maker TWS — one of the top five battery suppliers in the world.
So I delved a little deeper, asked questions and did some research.
