Drs Hiroyuki Nishide, Hiroaki Konishi and Takeo Suga at Waseda University have designed the battery - which consists of a redox-active organic polymer film around 200 nanometres thick. Nitroxide radical groups are attached, which act as charge carriers.
The battery has a high charge/discharge capacity because of its high radical density.

Dr Nishide said: "This is just one of many advantages the 'organic radical' battery has over other organic based materials which are limited by the amount of doping.

"The power rate performance is strikingly high - it only takes one minute to fully charge the battery. And it has a long cycle life, often exceeding 1,000 cycles."

Although this looks like a contact lens for a large robotic eye, it's really a rechargeable battery. It's the product of a group of Japanese scientists, and it's a polymer-based "organic radical" power source that can charge in just 60 seconds and can last 1,000 charges.

The film is just 200 nanometers thick and is the result of "spin-coating" a soluble polymer in a crosslinked fashion without losing the battery's charge—until now an insurmountable hurdle.

And although the scientists envision this kind of flexible battery in wide release in some kind of finished form - like an LCD or an OLED, we can't help but wonder whether you can see it again if you drop it on the floor