There’s a company in Busan, South Korea, called Jenax; its main business seems to be stainless steel thread used to make firefighters’ turn-out gear. At a wearables conference in Japan last week, Jenax showed what media reports say is a foldable Li-Ion battery that can bend 1 million times in its lifecycle.
Not all the details as they are being reported add up. Some reports say the J.Flex battery can be folded like an origami swan. Yet other reports say the battery’s thickness can vary from 3.5 cm to 20 cm thick; 3.5 cm is more than an inch thick, and is unlikely to be folded into anything delicate, so the illustration here is at best fanciful. Another site reports a power capacity of 2500mAh, which is a big number but meaningless without knowing the energy density of the thing; a 2500mAh battery the size and weight of a brick is not a significant technological advancement.
The Japanese site ASCII also reports on this. The Google Translate version of ASCII’s report is interesting, and adds the detail that the company showed this product at CES earlier this month. A check of the CES website shows that Jenax did, in fact, have a booth in Las Vegas. although we’re not aware of any press reports about the company coming out of the show. That’s unfortunately not an unusual fate, particularly for small Asian companies, at CES.
Still, a battery that can be repeatedly deformed and still maintain and provide a charge is significant. We look forward to learning more actual facts about it.
