However thin you may think lithium-ion batteries are in today’s smartphone and tablets, they are still not thin enough for the gadgets of the future. For example, the flat battery in the iPhone or the iPad takes up much of the space of the gadget and contributes to the bulk of its weight.
So, researchers at Imprint Energy are challenging long-accepted battery limitations and pioneering new ways to enable inexpensive, mass production of ultrathin, flexible, and high-energy density batteries. Flexible is good if these batteries are to be used in wearable devices.
Using everyday screen-printing machines (apparently, the same equipment that are used to print witty phrases on t-shirts), they print one layer of the battery on top of another, essentially printing a multilayer device stack to produce a single, rechargeable, ultra-thin battery.
We sincerely hope they are working with Mirrorless camera manufacturers. Mirrorless cameras consume a lot of the power from its removable Li-ion battery, primarily due to the need of maintaining Live View on the LCD display screen and/or electronic viewfinder. As a result, the Mirrorless camera can take about 350 images on a fresh charge compared to the 1,000+ that their DSLR competitors can.
If these ultra-thin, lightweight and rechargeable batteries could be somehow incorporated into the design of Mirrorless cameras (without contributing undesirable heat, and thus noise, to the image sensor) and exclusively used to power the LCD display screen and the electronic viewfinder (like in a smartphone or tablet), the removable Li-ion battery can then be dedicated to powering the shutter, autofocus and other needed functions. Of course, both batteries need to be able to last at least one full day of shooting 1,000+ images out in the field.
We are no electrical engineers, so if you are one, tell us whether you believe this idea can work.
