Highly Flexible Stencil Printed Alkaline Ag2O-Zn Battery for Wearable Electronics

Abstract

Flexible power sources such as batteries are essential to realize wearable and conformable electronic devices. The mechanical stability of the electrodes plays an important role in determining the overall flexibility of the battery. Styrene block copolymers-based elastomers have the potential to be used as binder materials in the electrodes for retaining their structural integrity under flexing during regular use. In this work, we demonstrate a stencil-printed flexible primary Ag2O-Zn battery on a nonconductive nylon mesh substrate that uses styrene-butadiene rubber as the anodic binder. A polyacrylic acid-based alkaline polymer gel is used as an electrolyte. The flexible alkaline battery achieved discharge capacities of 2.5 mAh and 1.6 mAh without and with a bend radius of 0.8 cm, respectively, under a constant current load condition of 0.1 mA.