Imagine a battery you can bend, stretch, even flex with a garment — and when it’s done serving you, it just breaks down without leaving toxic scraps behind. Researchers at McGill pulled that off. They’ve built a battery that’s not only soft and flexible, but also biodegradable and made from materials you’d trust around the environment.
How they re-imagined the battery
Instead of heavy-metal electrodes, they went with magnesium and molybdenum — metals that degrade far more easily once their job is done. In place of harsh, toxic electrolytes, they used gelatin mixed with simple, naturally occurring acids (citric or lactic acid). That mix turned out to do something critical: it prevents the magnesium in the battery from forming a passive layer that would kill performance. With the acids, the “bad” layer doesn’t build up — and the battery stays alive longer and stronger.
They didn’t stop there. To make the battery physically flexible, the team cast it into a thin sheet of gelatin + electrolyte, then cut it into a “kirigami” pattern — like folded paper art that can stretch and flex without tearing. The result: the battery can stretch up to 80% beyond its original size without losing its ability to deliver power.
Real-world test: does it actually work?
The researchers tried using the battery to power a small pressure sensor — like something you might wear on a finger. It worked. The output was a bit lower than a standard AA battery (1.3 V vs ~1.5 V), but it was enough to run a wearable device. That proves you don’t need heavy metals, toxic chemicals, or rigid casings to power flexible electronics.
Why this matters — beyond cool gadgets
We toss out tons of electronics — from old phones to obsolete wearables — and much of that ends up in landfills, often in countries least equipped to deal with toxic e-waste. A battery built from degradable materials changes the game. Once this approach is matured, wearable devices, medical implants, flexible IoT sensors — anything light, bendy, and small — could just dissolve harmlessly at the end of their life.
What’s next?
The research team is looking for partners to help push this from lab prototype to real product. The next goals: shrink the battery so it could fit inside implants or ultra-thin wearables, raise performance so it can run more demanding devices, and integrate it with biodegradable circuits and components. If all that comes together, we could soon see a wave of electronics that don’t stick around longer than they need to.
Read the full research: McGill researchers develop stretchable, biodegradable battery using eco-friendly acids | Newsroom – McGill University
