This flexible sliver of plastic is actually a polymer battery under development by Japanese scientists led by Drs. Hiroyuki Suga, Hiraoki Konishi and Takeo Suga at Waseda University.
A "redox-active organic polymer film," the sheet is 200nm thick and supposedly charges almost instantanously, with a life cycle accommodating 1,000 recharges or so.
The technical breakthrough at the device's heart is in creating the chargeable polymers so that they do not immediately discharge: “This has been a challenging step, since most crosslinking reactions are sensitive to the nitroxide radical," says Dr. Nishida, one of the researchers involved.
Flexible see-through battery power [Gizmag]
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