STMicroelectronics is making a move into the lithium battery market.
The chip maker is working with a California-based developer of lithium batteries, Front-Edge Technology (FET), and it plans to start selling FET’s rechargeable battery technology.
ST has made this move into a new product area because it sees a growing gap between the power needs of portable electronic products and the capabilities of existing battery technologies.
“We have the market reach to bring FET’s revolutionary ultra-thin battery technology to new industrial and consumer applications,” said Carmelo Papa, executive v-p and general manager of ST’s industrial and multi-segment business.
It is small or micro-power devices such as smartcards, RFID (Radio-Frequency ID) tags and wireless sensors, which ST will target with the solid-state thin-film energy cells.
Crucially, the technology will lead to flexible, or bendable batteries, as thin as 200 microns.
The battery’s solid electrolyte is Lithium Phosphorus Oxynitride (LiPON), a material originally developed by Oak Ridge National Laboratories.
"This enables the thin-film FET technology to deliver in the range of 10 to 20 times more power than existing coin-cell batteries,” said ST.
The FET technology is also claimed to offer a cycle life of more than 1,000 cycles at 50% discharge and fast current charging.
“Over the past ten years FET has developed NanoEnergy, the highest energy density thin-film battery technology in the industry, and three years ago we began commercially selling NanoEnergy batteries in small volumes,” said Dr. Simon Nieh, President of FET.