The company now plans to build a prototype battery pack that can generate over a milliamp of power before the end of Q3.

Globally, the market for wearable electronics generates sales revenue of more than US$10bn per year.

And with its self-charging battery technology, the research team at Strategic Elements (ASX:SOR) is looking to change the game in what is a major addressable market.

In its latest update this morning, SOR announced an important new development milestone, confirming that its battery technology had successfully powered an IoT device “equipped with both temperature and humidity sensors, and onboard Bluetooth communication”.

 

Bluetooth connectivity

The advantage of SOR’s battery ink cell technology lies in its ability to generate power from localised humidity in the air, which removes the need for extended periods of recharging.

That makes it a better option as the power input for wearable technology items such as heart-rate monitors and fitness tracker products.

In its latest test, the SOR research team demonstrated the battery’s ability to harvest moisture from the air and convert it to power a Cypress Semiconductor IoT sensor kit.

The Cypress kit is an industry-standard development platform used to test the effectiveness of integrated IoT technologies.

The device is equipped with temperature and humidity sensors, as well as an electronic control board and a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) communication module.

Over a five-hour testing period, the technology captured real-time temperature and humidity data, and “transmitted wirelessly to a laptop via sensors and the BLE communication module”, SOR said.

As part of the process, the battery cells were integrated with a commercial supercapacitor for the first time.

“This is a significant advancement as higher performance applications require a supercapacitor / battery for greater energy storage,” SOR said.

Research pathway

The real-time deployment of the battery ink technology follows an extensive period of product development by a leading research team at the University of NSW.

Earlier this year, that culminated in the achievement of a development goal; the production of multiple battery ink cells at a scaled-down size for a more optimised power-to-space ratio.

It gives SOR a potential advantage with global electronics companies, who have broadly adopted traditional screen-printing methods that enable small electronic components to be printed onto sheets of plastic.

The battery ink cells manufactured by SOR to-date are just 0.25cm-squared in size, and screen-printing equipment at UNSW has the capacity to print components “hundreds of times smaller than the current battery ink cell size”, SOR said.

In that context, SOR will aim “to finalise development and testing of a prototype battery ink formulated for screen printing over the next few weeks”.

And as it continues to build out the power generating ability of its battery ink technology, SOR flagged the next step in its development process.

The company now plans to build a prototype battery pack capable of generating over a milliamp of electrical current by the middle of the September quarter.

“If the screen printing battery ink, scaling and milliamp work is successful the Company will proceed to investigate pathways to generating a significantly larger amount of energy than has been contemplated to date,” SOR said.

This article was developed in collaboration with Strategic Elements, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing.

This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.

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