Flexible battery market to explode

Today’s tiny market for flexible, printed and thin-film batteries is expected to grow to $471m in 2026, according to market intelligence firm IDTechEx.

Internet of Things, wearables and environmental sensors require new features and battery designs that traditional battery technologies simply cannot provide. This has opened the door to innovation and added a new dimension to the global competition between battery suppliers.

Batteries are assuming new form factors, becoming ultrathin, flexible, rollable, stretchable etc. The technology is in a state of rapid progress as new designs, methods and modified chemistries are frequently announced.

The business landscape is also being dramatically altered as many companies are now gearing up to progress their lab-scale technologies into mass production.

The emergence of new addressable market categories has dramatically changed the composition of the target market. Traditionally, the micropower thin and printed batteries were used in skin patches, RFID tags and smart cards. Today, however, many new emerging applications have appeared, enticing many large players to enter the market that was once populated predominantly by small firms.

Technology and market landscape

The change in target markets is inevitably causing change in the technology landscape, too. This means that the market in 2026 will look vastly different from that in 2016, both on the technology and market level.

The market and technology landscape is complex. There are no black-and-white and clear technology winners and the definition of market requirements is in a constant state of flux. Indeed, on the technology side, there are many solutions that fall within the broad category of thin-film, flexible or printed batteries. These include printed batteries, thin-film batteries, laminar lithium-polymer batteries, advanced lithium-ion batteries, micro-batteries, stretchable batteries, thin flexible supercapacitors. It is therefore confusing technology landscape to navigate and betting on the right technology is not straightforward.

On the market side, many applications are still emerging and the requirements are fast evolving. The target markets are also very diverse and not overlapping, each with different requirements for power, lifetime, thinness, cost, charging cycles, reliability, flexibility etc. This diversity of requirements means that no thin-film battery solution offers a one-size-fits-all solution.

Applications

Wearable technology and electronic textiles are major growth areas for thin-film and flexible batteries. Conventional secondary batteries may meet the energy requirements of wearable devices, but they struggle to achieve flexibility, thinness and light weight.

These new market requirements open up the space for energy storage solutions with novel form factors. Indeed, the majority of thin-film battery companies tell us that they have ongoing projects in the wearable technology field. High-energy thin film batteries have the highest potential here followed by printed rechargeable zinc battery provided the latter can improve.

The healthcare sector is also a promising target market. Skin patches using printed batteries are already a commercial reality while IDTechEx anticipates that the market for disposable medical devices requiring micropower batteries will also expand. This is a hot space as the number of skin patch companies is rapidly rising. Here, printed zinc batteries have the highest potential but price needs to continue falling before a higher market uptake takes place. Here, too, new form factors will be the key differentiator compared to the high-volume incumbents such as coin cell batteries. Medical diagnostic devices and medical sensors are also promising markets, although the current thin battery technology is not mature enough yet to be applied straightaway. Wireless sensors/networks application is another important trend. Here, there is a trend to combine energy harvesting with thin batteries with superior form factors. Active and battery-assisted passive RFID is also a potential target market although coin-cells are the main solutions unless there is a stringent requirement for laminar or flexible design such as in car plates. It is also in these small niches that thin-film batteries might find place.

Smart cards also remain an attractive sector and several thin-film battery technologies have been optimised to meet the lamination requirements for card manufacture. The price is, however, too steep and lifetime too low for primary batteries (and charging challenging for secondary ones) to enable widespread market penetration. The emerging of online and mobile banking carries a long-term threat of substitution.