 My name is Martin Krebs. I'm a physicist and electrochemist. I'm working for Wata for more than 33 years, but now I'm retired. And this is my successor, Nicola Spieger. Well, in my retirement I continue to work with printed electronics because I did it for a long time and I support Wata and I am looking for new applications for printed batteries and other printed objects. Printed batteries, it can work? It does work, actually. So hello, my name is Nicola Spieger. I'm with Wata as the head of final projects, his successor basically. And we continue the story that he started from research projects now at the doorsteps basically of commercialization. Printed batteries, as you can see here, is the novel technology that we have at the moment. And basically it is a super-slim energy source which can be used in different applications. We have identified nowadays with the trend for internet of everything, with the trend of ever-sensing. Basically this device is the enabler of such technologies in sports, in medicine or basically in tracking. And the device, the battery source is designed super-slim with a certain capacity which can be integrated in different shapes, as you can see here. So it's basically connected with printed... It can be connected with digital... using some Wi-Fi, NFC and so on. So it goes in the shoe, it goes on the patch. Basically with the internet of everything or the ever-sensing. With sports trackers or with having medical applications for a smart patch, for example, it can be done in any shape to, for example, measure... Temperature can be measured for heartbeat, oxygen level. But the main application that we have also identified is of course in type of tracking. Sensitive good, for example. Think about all the vaccinations that are shipped around the globe at the moment by minus 80 degrees C. To track these, that it has still the same condition as initially. It can be equipped with a smart label, power sourced with our printed device. And in that track, over the full globe, reachable at any time via the mobile network. And it is designed to be long lasting for the critical time scale of six months or something like that. So... And that is the important thing. We have to find applications which are feasible, which the customers is needing. Because if we have a kind of market push, nobody takes care of. But if there's a market pull, an application like this LTE label which can send messages via mobile phone net, this is the thing that people need. Constantly looking for new applications where these electronics can be used. So, how advanced is the printed battery? Basically, as I mentioned at the doorstep of bringing this into market, we are now collaborating with partners. At the moment, we are able to produce prototypes of several hundred to be sampled. So, from the technical specs, so basically we have now a facility where we can already produce these prototypes. We are at the moment going into the next step of a pilot line. So with that, we could produce several hundred thousand of these. And in collaborating with other partners who are highly interested in the technology, we think we have market penetration around 24 to 25. What does it actually look like? Does it look like this one? Exactly. So it is super thin. It can be any shape, but let me go maybe back. It is something like that shape. It can be a smaller shape. It can be addressed to any shape as you want. That's basically the advantage of the printed technology. If you want to keep it equipped to your breast in a butterfly shape if you want to, you can make it. And is it from iron? No, it's a think carbon primary battery. So it is a super cheap material, high capacity, high power application, but only for one discharge. That's a huge difference that needs to be considered. That is what we tried in the past very quite often to apply any rechargeable systems that is usual in the market, nickel, metal, hydride, lithium-ion, but that creates great problems. So in the moment it is not possible to print these batteries. But on the other hand, we see that there is no market for secondary battery. Each customer asks for a primary battery that has a lifetime, enough for let's say 6 months, 12 months and then it is deposed because our battery doesn't contain any hazardous substances. Sink is in it and manganese dioxide is in it. So no hazardous substances in this battery and that makes it green and environmental friendly. What do you say, carbon? Sink carbon. Sink carbon. Sink. Like the tin cans or something like that. What is the difficulty of using something like lithium-ion or rechargeable on this form factor? Basically it would make the whole device more expensive. We are doing some research in that direction but the lithium-ion technology, as you can see from the markets that we address, we basically want to go in something where you can easily integrate it and also don't have to be concerned about disposing of it. So a primary source, for example, is here the energy supply of choice. It makes it much more sustainable because when you have a recharging system we would use more hazardous components which you would need a recharger itself which makes it much more complicated and the whole production process needs to be under certain atmosphere. The atmosphere conditions has to be in a dry room so this makes it super expensive. Basically it would be too high of its set for this type of applications. And Zink, you find it everywhere? Exactly. Zink is basically everywhere. It is in the battery technology, it thinks 150 years or longer. So basically there is no shortage in that and also no carbon and manganese dioxide in that sense. It is also super available. It sounds like all the stuff I take in my vitamins. No manganese dioxide, it is a special material for painters. It is a brown color for painters and manganese dioxide. And Zink is additive for the health. You get more healthy if you have a certain dose of Zink. It is the same magnesium from chocolate you are talking about, different. It is not magnesium, it is manganese. Manganese is a different element not to be confused with magnesium. But manganese, your normal alkaline batteries are basically out of the similar materials. So basically what you can buy at the supermarket the same materials in the batteries is basically processed in this device. It has a water-borne process. It is a water-based electrolyte. Also a huge difference towards lithium ion batteries which have organic electrolytes which are hazardous once they have some leakage. Nice. Can you talk a little bit about your interests in the industry what you have been working on before this project? In my case it is quite easy. When I finished my PhD at Theo Klaustahl in 1989 I went to Warta and found that that is the best job that I could get. Insofar there was no reason to change. And that until general of this year. And now I am an independent battery expert, a battery consultant and I see many interested partners who want to discuss with me about battery technology. So in all these years Warta did many chemist trees different combinations of technologies? Yes, but a micro-battery that is the company in Elwangen they have a lot of electrochemical systems. Sink air for hearing aids, silver oxide for watches, they have lithium manganese dioxide, coin cells for electronic devices. So I think in the field of portable devices Warta is a wholesaler and very good in each of these product branches. And what kind of discussions you can have here at the nanotechnology conference? For us the ISFUI is more interesting because ISFUI is part of the nanotechnology conference which concerns the printed electronics. And we see that a printed battery cannot be sold itself. It needs a printed smart object. And vice versa, printed smart objects with a button cell does not make sense. In so far it is a one-to-one relation between printed electronics and printed batteries. And that is what is discussed in ISFUI. That's the reason why I'm at ISFUI since 2009 and I like the place and I like Stegos logo Tertides. Many experts here. How many countries, many universities? Many countries who versus complete Europe. And it is very interesting and informative. And it is a chance to show what we are able to do. Especially we have a workshop on Tuesday, five talks and I'm leading the workshop. It goes for printed electronic code that goes to market. And that is the most important issue in the moment. How can we bring all these good investigations, inventions, these patterns? How can we bring it into the market? And here this is the best example basically. I mean, you started the research on it around 2012. So basically ten years in this research and now we are basically right at the point to have a ready to market sample. Basically being in discussions with interested partners in the industry. So this is to our opinion a really nice success story of one of Wata's product to be. What is the trick to get it to mass production? Do you have everything lined up? Do you have the partners who are going to help to do the... Is it role to role manufacturing? This is basically the goal. At the moment we have it still in the prototype production but everything is basically already at shelf prepared that we are in discussions with the interested partners from logistics. We are now going the intermediate step in a pilot line. This will be still sheet to sheet but we already have with our project process engineers the plans ready to go role to role. And then basically this will be in a scale of millions. It will change the world? I hope so. Basically I expect you. Actually every 8 billion people need batteries, need energy, power, solar, wind, all the different power and so it's like technology that changes the world. We do things in a smarter way that is useful for many people. Absolutely and especially for the environment. When I compare the batteries 100 years ago it has mercury, it has cardmium, it has lead in it but now all these hazardous substances are removed. Our battery is really a green product and so far I think it is the best product for storing. There is one comment right here. More dense batteries are usually more dangerous to handle. I wonder how these batteries react in a crisis? The printed batteries, it's easy to say. I mean I can punch through it. Still there is nothing to be worried about. If I go for lithium ion battery technology which is really a dense energy then of course I need to fulfill all the safety requirements but here basically I go into area. The battery is super thin, it's below 0.8 mm and we are going even lower. Still here basically the energy comes with area so the capacity is per square centimeter. And as you already said from the substances used, the chemicals used they are environmentally benign. We have a water based electrolyte so basically comparing to lithium ion batteries if they get in contact with atmosphere with ambient atmosphere, with water based atmosphere they will react but the primary battery doesn't. So you got everything figured out, everything lined up. Okay, thank you. We will further develop and decrease the capacity but now we are basically at a critical point where we see we are ready to partner up and to bring it into the world. And if people have new ideas what they want to do with this they can contact you? Absolutely, yeah. Please look it up, you can find it printed batteries at the Water Homepage. He can easily connect with us to discuss further applications. And it's just now is the time, that's what Martin said. We see a huge market pool because the development of the electronics of printed electronics or the chip industry it uses less energy, it gets smaller and smaller and we are getting more and more connected in our daily life. I mean we are getting connected with health trackers we are getting smart patches we are getting internet of things into internet of everything and here basically this is a nice piece of ingredient which will support this because all of it needs energy source. I did a video about the ARM devices and kind of like the chairman of the company that owns ARM talks about trillions of IoT devices they all need batteries. They can run them without. If you want to be independent if you want to stay independent you need a battery. I mean for each application you basically have a certain type of battery useful. So lithium-ion battery technology is very useful in certain applications but in others we see this battery also very important to fill the gap and being in that sense even more environmental friendly. And recycle, recycling? We already use a huge share of recycling material already on production and it is recyclable at the end as well. Yeah, for these type of batteries there is a recycling concept that is available. It's the same concept as for manganese dioxide batteries alkaline batteries which are in every supermarket. So we can use the same recycling processes as these under other things. So that is quite easy.