The 3D thin-film microbattery based on a solid electrolyte could be a viable future technology for applications where energy needs to be delivered locally at the point of its actual usage. However, there are yet a number of challenges to overcome related to this technology. On the other hand, application of organic electrode materials in a Li-ion battery environment was only an attractive dream up until very recently. In the TransFlexBattery project these two challenging concepts were combined. We fabricated ultrathin Li-organic anode and cathode layers for our Li-organic thin-film microbattery using currently strongly emerging atomic/molecular layer deposition (ALD/MLD) thin-film technique; the inorganic electrolyte layer was deposited in the same reactor using our recently developed and patented atomic layer deposition (ALD) process for the well-known solid electrolyte LiPON (lithium phosphorus oxynitride). The thus fabricated microbattery is not only light in weight and safe to use, but also mechanically flexible and transparent. Within the TransFlexBattery project we could demonstrate the practical feasibility of this novel microbattery cell, verify its excellent rate performance, recognize the most crucial further optimization steps and finally address its future commercial potential through market analysis.
