MEDICA 2014: ZINC-BASED BATTERY COULD POWER FUTURE THIN, FLEXIBLE WEARABLE MEDICAL DEVICES

Will Lithium’s toxicity compel engineers to search elsewhere for a safe power source for ultra-thin devices?

On the opening day at 2014 MEDICA, Ph.D. Devin MacKenzie, CEO of Imprint Energy gave a very interesting talk on how wearable medical devices will be powered in the future. His talk entitled, “New Technologies to Power Smart Wearable and Disposable Medical Devices,” focused on the need for a safe, flexible and thin energy source to power wearable medical devices. He argued that lithium based batteries are not the way forward, due to lithium’s toxic nature and the risk of leakage in the case of a malfunction. His company Imprint Energy, a UC Berkeley spin-out, has been working on developing a rechargeable, printable zinc-based battery, known as ZincPoly, that is both inherently safe and extremely flexible, yet powerful enough to run a wearable device.

MacKenzie said, “power requirements are dominated by connectivity.” The surge in power required to launch a wireless connection is beyond most flexible, thin battery technologies. This means wearable technologies such as Nike’s Fuel Band must use thick, rigid batteries that cannot flex. Imprint Energy stress-tested many commercially available flexible battery technologies and found that they were unreliable after a relatively short number of cycles. MacKenzie claims that his ZincPoly battery has thousands of cycles of flexibility and can continue to work even when punctured, with no risk of leakage due to its solid state construction. The batteries are less than 0.5 mm in thickness and have a capacity of 5-100 mAh (milliampere-hour), with an approximate shelf life of 12 months.

MacKenzie is seeking medical device development partners to bring this technology into the wearable device market. He believes the “high power capabilities of the thin ZincPoly battery” and its inherently safe nature would be ideal for powering flexible, wearable medical devices.