Direct Printed Battery-On-flexible circuit boards for digital applications

When something goes missing at home, like your keys, it's an annoying program. When things get misplaced or lost at work, it's a real problem that costs businesses across the world a lot of money.

In the course of everyday business, a growing new workforce of geographically disperse employees share use of things ranging from tools, demo kits, equipment for portable medical use, IT, or service truck-rolls, to boxes put into storage. When something goes missing, work doesn't get done. Production lines go down. Lives can even be at stake when medical equipment isn't where it's supposed to be.

Reelables, a London-based start-up, has invented a smart label to make tracking things at work completely automatic. It simply peels and sticks like a barcode label. Employees gather information about assets at work with their phones running an app in the background. No scanning required. The unique software provides every employee the ability to know where all their things are at any moment. It also enables them to find things, see what their co-workers have, and when they had it.

Existing asset tracking solutions on the market require a lot of work or are very costly to use and install. They range from simple barcode labels to very expensive GPS-enabled devices. RFID solutions, like barcodes, require manually going about scanning things or installing high power antennas in the ceiling or doorway. The Reelables smart label addresses a mid-range solution which allows for wider market implementation.

The key innovation making this possible is a manufacturing process to form a battery directly alongside a wireless circuit on a thin plastic film. Initial working prototypes of the smart label are made on the same material used for ordinary potato crisp bags. However, the added cost and size of an external battery is the barrier to mass production.

This feasibility study, in conjunction with the Centre for Process Innovation and Digital Catapult aims to demonstrate a game-changing new technology for forming a Battery-on-Circuit. The team intends to show that by electrochemically coating and laminating two plastic films together, an extremely low cost battery can be formed to power a wireless label for more than a year. The team further intends to demonstrate a host of new applications, business efficiencies, and use cases enabled by the innovation that in turn drives economic growth.