Self-powered intelligent paper documents?
Back from vacation ! Feeling energized again.
Talking about energy, good old printing technologies are being used in many novel ways. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany collaborated with other German researchers to print batteries on paper-thin, flexible substrates. The prototype weight less than 1 gram, are 1-mm thick, but can produce 1.5 V per cell without using hazardous chemicals. Even better, the team claims to be on track for a 2010 product launch.
The process is a bit more complex than could be produced by an office device, as it uses lithographic-like techniques to pattern layers over layer. However, probably some day your standard office printing devices, including office or inkjet, will be able to do that.
One distant day in the Document 3.0 future, your paper document will not be passive and inactive anymore. Not only will it be trackable, e.g. through printed RFID tags; but it might even become an active, aware, self-powered device, with printed batteries, circuitry and antennas. Of course, that assumes paper is still around by then, but I am pretty sure it will…
In future, everybody will have one paper for each – that is one epaper with him/her. The document can move from my epaper to your epaper – thru wireless. We may not need an RFID tag, as it will be built in wireless device – tracked thru “Satellite” like a GPS
so also the person carrying it. It is like a slate , once we used to use in school and carry in your bag.
Keep writing… i like your posts.
Power Paper based in Israel has done research and has printed batteries products (or at least advanced prototypes). Amazingly enough, not in the document domain but cosmetics, like anti-aging products.
Keep posting :~)
Pat