ASU engineers' stretchable batteries voted most innovative

A medical device industry news website recently asked its readers what emerging technologies offer the greatest potential for innovation in the "med tech" field.

Their top choice: flexible batteries, in particular batteries whose designs are based on the ancient paper-folding art of origami.

Among the leading advances in the area are the stretchable batteries being developed by a team of Arizona State University engineers led by Hanqing Jiang, an associate professor in the School for Engineering of Matter, Transport and Energy, one of ASU's Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering.

His team's application of a version of origami called kirigami has produced lithium-ion batteries with enough elasticity to enable the batteries to be stretched to 150 percent of their original size.

Jiang and his fellow researchers have demonstrated how the battery can be woven into an elastic wristband and fully power the multiple functions of a smart watch. That success raises hopes of using such batteries to expand the capabilities of wearable electronics.

Now the team is also pondering the potential biomedical applications of the kirigami batteries.