LG Chem might not be as well-known as its parent, but that doesn’t mean the branch isn’t important. A new development by the South Korean electronics company could have major potential down the road.

What is it? A whole new form factor, a battery that is a wire. The cable-like wire battery is just really small and yet is designed with flexibility in mind. You can bend it, twist it, no problem. Right now they are a few millimeters in diameter, but the idea is to continue to shrink the size of the battery as time passes.

During testing researchers powered an iPod Nano for 10 hours using a 25 centimeter long strand do accomplish it. LG is hoping to mass produce the technology by 2017, which gives them several years to work on shrinking the size of the wire-battery.

The future potential is actually pretty huge. A small wire battery could ‘wrap’ around the inside of a smartphone or tablet case and could even pair itself with a flexible screen and casing. Even more futuristic ideas include smart clothes that have wired battery strands within them that are so tiny you won’t notice them. The point? They could power smart functions on the clothes or even work as a wireless charging back-up system for other electronic devices.

While some of these more advanced uses might be decades off, we only have about 5 years to wait before LG attempts to mass produce these things. The future looks bright when it comes to technological progress, that much is apparent.

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The idea of a flexible smartphone sometime in the not-so-distant future certainly is a dream that many of us have heard about on more than one occasion, especially ever since we first got our hands (or eyes, rather) on Samsung demonstrations of flexible screens. The idea that you can bend a phone without any damage occurring is a fascinating concept, even if it seems to be far from seeing itself as a complete concept. Part of the puzzle in getting this type of device up and running is to make sure that all the components are flexible, and that includes the battery.

The Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology may have done just, as you can see from the video below. This unique battery was put together by Professor Keon Jae Lee and his team and uses flexible lith-ion technology that can bend and warp without adversely affecting the battery life or quality in any way. Eventually such technologies could come together to create high-tech gizmos like smartphones that can also bend and connect in a way that it would form wearable watch-like device, for example, and then with another snap could turn back into a regular old smartphone. The future has plenty of interesting technologies in store for us that seem like crazy Sci-Fi concepts right now, and unlocking the secrets to technologies like the flexible battery is just half the battle involved in fully realizing and creating such futuristic gadgets.

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It’s inventions like this that make me so proud to be a Canadian. Maksim Skorobogatiy and his colleagues at the Polytechnic School of Montreal have come up with a way that has flat, flexible batteries built right into garment fabric.

This is quite different from what we already see in some other clothing. Those t-shirts with the flashing LEDs have a battery pack sewn onto them. Vests with solar panels have batteries laid over top (or underneath) them. What these Canadian scientists have been able to create is a flexible fabric where the batteries are actually integrated in the fabric itself.

In order to build their battery, they sandwich a solid polyethylene oxide electrolyte between a lithium iron phosphate cathode and lithium titanate anode. All of these are thermoplastic materials, which can be stretched under mild heating.

It’s fully wearable and fully flexible without using any liquid electrolytes. The trouble is that the artificial leather-like material is not yet waterproof or washable. When it is, they expect to see all sorts of application, from portable debrillating to medical monitoring.  I wonder if that liquipel technology would help?

Photo Top: Tron [ Source: PDF Link ]

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