A Coplanar Edible Rechargeable Battery with Enhanced Capacity

Edible rechargeable batteries represent a novel opportunity for energy storage, which currently involves the use of toxic materials. Being entirely made of food-derived materials and additives, such batteries open the way to electronic systems characterized by unprecedented features. Their sustainability and safety can be crucial for replacing traditional batteries in low-power applications, like agrifood and medicine, reducing environmental impact and health hazards. Yet, limitations in capacity and architecture, and concerns about stability at elevated temperature, humidity, and prolonged storage time, severely limit their current application potential. Here, a new coplanar architecture of a riboflavin-quercetin edible battery with increased capacity, reaching 20 µAh, and operational stability of two weeks is presented. The battery is tested in diverse environmental conditions to assess its possible implementation in different scenarios, showing stable performance between 0 and 37 °C. As a proof-of-concept application, the coplanar architecture is exploited to develop a 3-cell battery with a voltage of ≈2 V and demonstrate the possibility of powering a commercial Internet of Things (IoT) module. The new design and data herein presented represent significant steps toward widening the opportunities offered by edible batteries and their implementation in low-power electronics.