Water-activated microbatteries with long shelf life have been demonstrated based on a one-mask, micromachining process for the first time. Magnesium is used as the anode and silver chloride or cuprous chloride is used as the cathode in the prototype demonstration. Adding water or aqueous solutions activate the electrochemical reactions between the anode and cathode to release electricity. Experimentally, a maximum output voltage was measured at 1.65 Volts and the maximum operation capacity has been demonstrated to be more than 1.8 mW -hours when an electrode area of 12 mm ×12 mm was used. As such, these microbatteries have great potential to be integrated with micro devices as the power sources for microsystems, such as disposable diagnostics and BioMEMS chips.
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