NEC Ultra Thin (0.3mm) Organic Radical Batteries Get Ready For Future Credit Cards!

Engineers at Japan's NEC have been working on reducing the thickness of batteries so that the future gadgets can been thinner. These thin batteries are called Organic Radical Batteries (ORB) and the latest breakthrough in ORB technology is the ultra thin 0.3 mm thick battery. The battery capacity is 3 mAh and output is rated at 5 kW/L. A fully charged new battery can refresh a screen 2000 times and takes about 30 seconds to recharge. What's more impressive is that after about 500 charging & discharging cycles, the battery maintains about 75% of the charge.


NEC Printed Battery | Credit: NEC Japan

NEC's quest for polymer based batteries began back in 2001 but the size of the battery couldn't shrink below 0.7mm. The engineers however have succeeded in using printed battery technology so that batteries would get printed directly on the circuit boards.  This opens newer possibilities of smarter credit cards, railway or bus tickets, ATM cards and so on. Your credit card, for example can directly show you your account balance without needing the ATM machine. However NEC is already thinking beyond smarter credit cards. NEC wants to embed these batteries in displays and flexible screens that look & feel like paper.

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