ElectriPlast -- Developing Plastic Batteries…

The following is a Research and Development missive, speaking to the emerging Plastic Battery technology.


Recent lab tests indicate that rechargeable Plastic Batteries can potentially double the capacity and volume of use over that of today’s Lithium-based batteries.


How does Integral Technologies and their Intellectual Property material, ElectriPlast, fit into the equation? Moreover how can this fact be of benefit to you or I as prospective marketplace consumers, or (if you happen to be one) as an Integral Technologies, OTCBB: ITKG shareholder?

There are simple answers to these questions…

First though, to describe the concept of a Plastic Battery.

Batteries consist of three main components: an anode (the positive electrode), a cathode (the negative one), and an electrolyte (the conductive material between the electrodes, such as a liquid in a car battery). Much like the experiments done when you were a kid, and you took a lemon and stuck a penny in one end and a nail in the other and this produced enough energy to spark a light.

According to the Integral Technologies patent information, submitted by Tom Aisenbrey -- ElectriPlast could end up playing a significant role by providing a key component in a revolutionary new type of battery that will soon become available commercially. Unlike the standard of today, this revolutionary battery will store its electricity in plastic.


Environmentally Friendly…

A Rechargeable Plastic Battery is first and foremost considered environmentally friendly. Plastic batteries are the most radical innovation in commercial batteries since the dry cell was introduced in 1890. Unlike metal-based nickel-cadmium rechargeable batteries, plastic batteries contain no heavy metal, which can contaminate soil and water. Plastic batteries also contain no liquids, which can leak and pose safety hazards.

The Many Positives…

The Plastic Battery operates efficiently in extreme heat or cold; whereas the reliability and properties in a number of other type battery materials vary with temperature—for example, today’s standard car battery does not always start well when exposed to extreme cold.

Plastic Batteries also offer higher capacity, higher voltage, and longer shelf life than many competitive designs. According to Integral Technologies Investor Relations, a number of companies are using these plastic batteries to test new shapes and configurations, including flat batteries, which are credit card thin, and can be bent like cardboard, or cut and folded into a specific shape.

Design Flexibility…

Plastic batteries are extremely light weight—in fact, depending on the process used to create these batteries, they can be anywhere between 60-90% lighter than that of conventional metal batteries. (Consider this as a comparison -- imagine that time you changed out the battery from your car. This battery weighed anywhere from 25 to 50 lbs. Most of that weight was due to the lead plates within the battery, and the conductive fluid 'acid'. In using a plastic battery, the future weight of the car battery will be anywhere from 8 to 22 lbs, and without the hazard of conductive fluid sloshing about within. Consider further the impact that such a change could make on both the electric car and hybrid vehicle industries.) These batteries have the capability of being molded into almost any size and shape—this factor in itself has implied military and space applications. The flexibility in this technology is a key factor that will one day free electronic designers from many of the constraints (such as limited recharging cycles, high weight & high cost) presently imposed by the use of metal batteries.

Imagine if you will, using a battery in a large sheet form, so that you could have a battery that occupied an entire wall for example, while keeping in mind that it had very little thickness. With that in mind, the uses and applications in this form become limitless.

Less Internal Wear & Tear…

Chemically, the plastic battery is different from conventional metal-based rechargeable batteries. In metal-based batteries, material from one plate migrates to another plate and back in a reversible chemical reaction. In a conducting plastic battery, the anode and cathode are made of thin, non-degrading, foil-like plastic sheets. The electrolyte is a polymer gel film placed between the electrodes holding the battery together. In short, unlike the conventional battery with its chemical reaction there is no metal plate being constantly consumed, a factor which severely limits the number of times the battery can be recharged/reconstituted. In other words, a conventional battery life is limited by the number of times the plates can be reconstituted. This difference portends to a longer recharge-cycle lifetime for the plastic batteries.

Other Benefits of Developing a Plastic Battery:

In addition, with a growing energy need on the consumer front, plastic batteries (from a manufacturing standpoint) are very easy to make, using simple stuff—organic compounds. They easily lend their superior applications to suitable consumer devices—from solar cell charging systems, car batteries, laptops and cell phones to smaller items such as hearing aids and wristwatches.


Reference Material:

• http://www.zmp.com/news.html New Battery Technology in Development to potentially double laptop run times. 9 June 2004
• http://www.jhu.edu/news_info/news/home96/nov96/batt.html Power from Plastics: Hopkins Scientists Create All-polymer Battery. 12 Nov 1996
• http://www.osti.gov/accomplishments/macdiarmid.html Alan MacDiarmid, Conductive Polymers, and Plastic Batteries.

ElectriPlast & the 4 W's Minus the When...

Inherently

Conductive

Plastics

Technologies



By Tricia Duryee
Seattle Times -- July 11, 2005



Metal-Plastic Blend may be the Right Stuff...


What: Integral Technologies

What it does: Research, develop and commercialize a new material called "electriplast." Composed of different types of metal and plastic, electriplast acts like metal but it can be molded or extruded like plastic.

Who: Bill Robinson, chief executive, who works from the company's Vancouver, B.C., office; and Thomas Aisenbrey, general manager in the company's Bellingham headquarters.

ElectriPlast Advantage: It reduces the cost of manufacturing because it is easier to mold and is lighter than metal. Its use in airplanes could make them more efficient; it could make cellphones smaller. "It reduces 50 percent of the part count because you can do more with molding," Aisenbrey said. "If you are building 4 million parts, and saving 3 to 4 cents a part, that becomes a big chunk of change. It is 40 percent less weight than aluminum and 80 percent less than copper."

The History: Robinson started the company in 1996, focusing on developing new antennas for wireless devices such as cellphones and for satellite communications. The company developed a "flat panel" antenna that looks more like a sheet of paper than the standard whip antenna on a car. When Aisenbrey came on board in 2001, he was charged with building part of the flat panel.

The Serendipity: In trying to figure out how to build part of the antenna so it wouldn't rust, Aisenbrey invented electriplast as a solution. As partly plastic, it would be resistant to rusting.

The Patents: Since then, Aisenbrey has filed 100 patents, most still pending, to explore the market potential of the material. "This is the next stage in manufacturing in many regards," Aisenbrey said. "Now you have the ability to mold things you never thought you could possibly do with metal."

And, The Bottom Line: The company raised $19 million by going public in 1996 and today has about 5,000 shareholders. Friday, it closed at 49 cents on the Over the Counter Bulletin Board. Still in research-and-development mode, Integral has six employees and had a net loss of $57,482 on no revenue in the quarter ended in March. At the time, the company had about $2.25 million in cash.

ElectriPlast & Six Degrees of Separation...

What does

Starbucks and

Integral

Technologies

have in common?


By Vince S.
ElectriPlast Blog Editor



[ElectriPlast Blog Publisher's Note: This may read as an off-topic subject, but it isn't. Think "Paul Harvey and the Rest of the Story," and read on... ]


Starbucks, a small coffee bean roasting company, started in Seattle in the mid-1980’s.

Eventually, they came to the attention of a culinary supply house in New York because of their extraordinary reorder rate for coffee roasting machines. This piqued the interest of Howard Schultz, an executive with the supply house, who decided to travel to Seattle to see first hand the company that ordered roasters at twice the rate of other clients. Schultz was in awe and enamored with the company. He saw tremendous potential in the nascent company, but only if Starbucks shifted its model from roasting coffee beans to selling coffee drinks (espresso, cappuccino, etc.) like the great coffee bars of Europe! Eventually, Schultz quit his five-figure job in NY and talked his way into a job with Starbucks.

Schultz spent a lot of time during those early months trying to convince the owners to shift from roasting coffee beans to selling espresso. Frustrated, he left Starbucks to put his ideas to practice. In 1985, he opened “Il Giornale,” a small chain of espresso bars in Seattle and Vancouver. The concept had an immediate impact on the weather-weary dispositions of Seattle's citizens. They loved the idea, and “Il Giornale” prospered and grew.

In 1987, the owners of Starbucks decided to sell the company to Schultz, who raised $3.8 million from local investors.

However, many local law firms were skeptical of the deal and the financing. After all, roasting coffee beans had proven profitable, but “selling cups of coffee” on a large scale was an unproven venture.

Then a young lawyer came forward to negotiate the deal.

"A lawyer's eyes start to sparkle when he sees a person like Howard come in with a plan like Starbucks," he recalled. As a sign of confidence in Starbucks, the young lawyer took part of his fee in shares of the new company.

Howard Schultz’s idea of a chain of coffee houses was visionary and disruptive. Starbucks took the world by storm, and Schultz has been enshrined in the annals of business as a new era CEO; a man who saw the future in the bottom of a coffee cup! Since its initial public offering in 1992, SBUX has appreciated 3300-fold.

And the young Seattle lawyer?

Fate had already annointed him. His “hippie” son, a college-drop out, had recently moved his entourage of “nerds” from a dingy garage to a modern office building. In time, the world would come to recognize this group of “nerds” as the founding team of the disruptive technology called, Microsoft!

Bill Gates, Sr., is truly an unsung visionary for recognizing the potential of the Starbucks Coffee Company. While history may not credit him for his progeny, he could well be hailed as a cornerstone of the next disruptive technology, ElectriPlast.

Isn't it ironic that Bill Gates, Sr. (a key member of the worldwide law firm Preston Gates & Ellis) is part of the Integral Technologies team currently supporting and promoting the emerging disruptive technology surrounding ElectriPlast & their Plastenna innovations?


Posted originally from the RagingBull board, written and submitted by Vince S. -- The ElectriPlast Blogs' new Editor-in-Chief.

ElectriPlast – Spotlight on Tom Aisenbrey Part 1…

The

ElectriPlast

Inventor



By Dan Richman
Seattle Post-Intelligencer--16 April 2004



[ElectriPlast Blog Publisher's Note: The following article will shed insights gleaned from a Seattle Post press release. The article entitled “An invention in Bellingham could alter your cell phone” offers a clue to the next step in the ElectriPlast and Plastenna marketing game plan.

For those new to the ElectriPlast story and the myriad of implications associated, read on. Enlightenment is not far away -- PK sends...]

-------------------

A Bellingham firm says it has created a plastic that can turn cell phones into their own antennas, resulting in fewer dropped calls, better battery life and clearer reception.

The highly conductive resin, dubbed Electriplast, could also improve the efficiency of LED lighting, in-floor radiant heating, defibrillators and pacemakers, said its inventor, Thomas Aisenbrey, who is chief technology officer at Integral Technologies Inc.

Antennas molded out of Electriplast and mounted on military vehicles would be harder to see and therefore tougher to disable, and on cars, they'd be unobtrusive.
Electriplast isn't on the market yet, but trials are going on at four Fortune 100 companies, and major handset makers have expressed strong interest, said Aisenbrey, who holds two patents on the substance and has 44 more pending.

The inexpensive material, also known as Plastenna, conducts heat, electricity and radio- frequency energy nearly as well as copper, yet it can be mixed with rigid or flexible plastics and formed into just about any shape plastic can take on, he said.

"My gut's telling me this is going to change the electronics world," said Aisenbrey, 46.

An independent testing lab verified some of Aisenbrey's claims.

"He could show that a cell phone modified with his antenna was up to twice as efficient as with a normal antenna," said Lothar Schmidt, a technical manager for Cetecom Inc. of Milpitas, Calif.

For the chief executive of Integral Technologies, which hasn't turned a profit since it was founded in 1996, Electriplast represents a bright future.

"I think it will rock the wireless world, quite frankly," said Bill Robinson, who runs the company from an office in Vancouver, B.C. "It's fun to be in the position we're at, finally."

The company, which is traded over the counter, has a market capitalization of about $31 million, with 5,000 shareholders.

At one time, it had 20 employees. But when Aisenbrey, who said he has been tinkering with electronics since age 6, arrived there from Panasonic three years ago, he fired the rest of the engineering staff because of their inefficiency. Now it has seven employees.

A high school grad with certificates in electronics and sound engineering, Aisenbrey came up with Electriplast 30 months ago "as a fluke thing" while trying to remedy design flaws in an antenna the company had been shipping.

A patent search revealed nothing like it, clearing the way for intensive development, third party testing and commercialization perhaps as early as this year.

"Without a doubt, we want to drive this company into a multimillion business," Aisenbrey said. "I'm not here for the fresh air."


Other Related Articles:

Popular Science: “Best of What’s New – General Innovation”
Integral Technologies website: http://www.itkg.net/

ElectriPlast and of all things Plastic Antenna’s???

Introducing

PlasTenna



By PK
ElectriPlast Blog Publisher


The following article spells out the Relationship between ElectriPlast and a Product dubbed PlasTenna…

Some reading may be familiar on the general nature of ElectriPlast, especially after running web searches on the term in order to better understand the subject matter. Or if you are, or intend on becoming a shareholder looking at investment potential, or yours is one of the reportedly many companies in on the ground floor, and in the midst of conducting business directly with the Integral Technologies—the company responsible for the creation of ElectriPlast—then it would be likely that you too may end up touching various resources in an attempt at sleuthing the long-term potential of ElectriPlast and its associated products. Either way, for anyone familiar or not, the following should help…


Integral Technologies Inc. (OTCBB: ITKG) has developed a new innovative electrically conductive resin based material deemed "ElectriPlast." The company holds US provisional patents and patents pending on over 90 different electronic applications around its ElectriPlast Technology. Various examples of industries that ElectriPlast can be used in are antennas, shielding, lighting circuitry, switch actuators, resistors, medical devices, thermal management and cable connector bodies, to name just a few. The company is on the brink of introducing these new products and the ElectriPlast Technology on a global scale.

What—you may be asking—does this all have to do with of all things an antenna made purely from plastic?

Well get comfortable, and read the rest of the story…

About 5 or 6 years ago, Integral Technologies was on the verge of introducing a line of leading-edge micro-antennas, with varying capabilities, onto the marketplace. Antennas that would have, back then, been in the forefront of launching the WiFi initiative. Antennas that would have, back then, been on the ground floor, and a serious part of the backbone for Sirius & XM Satellite Radio receivers. Antennas that would have, back then, been a lucrative part of the ORBCOMM’s LEO satellite receiver apparatus, used for transportation, commercial communication/tracking system. In short, Integral Technologies had made in-roads with a number of computer laptop and cell phone manufactures. They were set to sell their product to a number of well-known companies, many of which went on to become very successful.

As the company was on the cusp of making their move, they were sideswiped by a vindictive and unexpected lawsuit by a company called IAS Communications (OTCBB: IASCA). IAS, for lack of a better way of phrasing the issue, attempted to extort millions of dollars from Integral just as they were on the verge of exploding onto the market scene. Years before, Integral and IAS worked together on antenna innovations. Their paths separated. The agreement at the time noted that IAS would direct its energies toward the Military/Government market, while Integral would direct its focus and efforts purely on commercial ventures. As a result, IAS chose to invest (in hopes of selling to the military) in the once secretive Hawk’s Contrawound Helical Toroidal Antenna—or the short version, CTHA. Meanwhile, Integral went down another path towards building satellite and micro-antennas designed to fulfill unique emerging commercial niche markets.

Tested, but eventually dropped and later ignored by the military and government, IAS had problems from day one with their antenna. This antenna—which in the end, had the appearance of a bike tire wrapped in strands of wire—clearly did not work at all. Click this link to read that horror story. Meanwhile, Integral’s stock began shooting through the roof in anticipation of its novel commercial market breakthrough.

Months before Integral’s big push onto the marketplace, IAS contacted and threatened to sue Integral for copyright infringement and industrial IP theft, noting that Integral used the CTHA technology in their satellite and micro-antenna product-line. (Now, for the record, none of Integral’s satellite panels or micro-antennas looked vaguely like a bike tire, but that didn’t deter IAS in their attempt at a money grab.)

Integral, rightly told them to take-a-hike, and so, weeks before product launch, IAS filed a lawsuit curtailing Integral’s efforts, and bringing to a halt their prospective business plans.

The court case lasted almost a year in a half, with IAS stalling throughout. Towards the end, IAS’ agenda was so blatant that the judge began fining IAS and their lawyers. In the end, the final judgment was settled in Integral’s favor—but that was a bittersweet victory. The companies Integral had first arranged to do business with found other suppliers. The marketplace was saturated with antenna products similar to Integral’s once novel and innovative micro-antennas. Likewise, ORBCOMM’s interest in Integral’s satellite antenna products was sidelined by their own bankruptcy/reorganization concerns. After all was said and done, the opportunity to get in on the ground floor of a newly emerging market had passed.

But, I did note it was a bittersweet victory. Before and during the trial, Integral’s Thomas Aisenbrey uncovered (literally stumbled across) a unique formula that he thought to use as a sealant for the company’s satellite antenna-panel line. This unique formula increased the satellite antenna’s reception multi-fold, and in angles and under circumstances never before seen. Curious, he took apart his own cell phone, taking out the antenna and covering the surface of the phone with this newfound substance.

The phone not only worked, but the thing worked like gangbusters. Underground car garages, out of the way country drives, inside office buildings and malls, the phone worked. As the IAS lawsuit began, this became the Integral’s top-secret focus, to develop this new substance, and quietly test out its ultimate potential.

Thus was born the PlasTenna…

So, just what is this Plastic Antenna, or as Integral Technologies calls it: PlasTenna?

According to an article submitted in Popular Science magazine, written by Jim LaBounty.

It’s not a plastic-coated copper pole destined to snap off. A PlasTenna is a highly conductive blend of plastic and metal fibers that can be molded to create any part of a cell phone—turning the casing into the antenna. Conventional antennas are oriented in a single direction, not necessarily in line with cellphone waves, and when the two don’t match, your signal suffers. In contrast, the ingredients in PlasTenna’s secret recipe are distributed in a latticework that sponges up radio signals from all angles, boosting reception.

The secret recipe surrounding the PlasTenna soon became the foundation for the myriad of other “Electric Plastic”, or as dubbed by Integral Technologies, “ElectriPlast” innovations. The more Thom Aisenbrey tested and played with the material, the more niche applications he found and filed patents for.

In my opinion, Integral is on yet another cusp—on the verge of breaking into a new marketplace. The company managers are wiser than before. They have deliberated in building a firm foundation to support that pending emergence. This foundation consists of patents, to include pending, provisional. It also encompasses advisors both legal and market connected. It includes funding to include Wells Fargo and Wellington Investment brokerages. And if you happen to be a shareholder, it includes you too.

The potential impact of Integral’s product could end up being profitable to a staggering extent. There is risk associated, but there is also keen interest. That interest rests in the fact that the PlasTenna has capabilities, which reportedly exceeds (by “80 times*”) any antenna product on the market today. The interest also rests in the fact that the ElectriPlast/PlasTenna material is moldable, lightweight and non-corrosive. Most importantly--as gleaned from Integral's patent submissions--depending on the disruptive formulation process used, ElectriPlast can used in conducting raw electricity or electronic signal propagation, or on the flip side, it can be used as a shield against these properties.

Until this product comes to market and becomes proven and established – there will be a great degree of Interest and Risk present.

For additional follow up to this piece, link to the following:
SIGNAL Magazine *
Integral’s Website
Frost & Sullivan
Modern Plastics Worldwide
ABC News - Austin Texas Affiliate KVUE
EETimes German Edition
DataWeek TechNews
LinkGrinder
Seattle Post Intelligencer
Big Charts News Service
The Black Voice News