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The future might have just arrived. Scientists have demonstrated the new elastic battery can be pulled and stretched up to three times its original size. Watch the stretchy battery in action in the video below.

The invention, made by Yonggang Huang, an engineer at Northwestern University and John Rogers at the University of Illinois - was published today in the journal Nature Communications. The researchers say they envision the battery being used for wearable gadgets, implantable brain-wave monitors, or other bionic devices.

"We can stretch the device a great deal - up to about 300 percent - and still have a working battery," Huang noted.

"We have explored various methods, ranging from radio frequency energy harvesting to solar power," senior author of the research paper, Rogers told BBC News. "Batteries are particularly challenging because, unlike electronics, it's difficult to scale down their dimensions without significantly reducing performance."

To produce the stretchy battery, the researchers begin with tiny, individual, rigid battery storage components arranged next to each other. The bendy and stretchy characteristics are a result of tightly packed, wavy wires that connect these components.

"When we stretch the battery, the wavy interconnects unravels, much like yarn unspooling, while the storage components almost keep undeformed, because of their much larger rigidity than the interconnects" Huang explained.

Huang and Rogers have demonstrated a battery that continues to work -- powering a commercial light-emitting diode (LED) -- even when stretched, folded, twisted and mounted on a human elbow. The battery can work for eight to nine hours before it needs recharging, which can be done wirelessly.

"We start with a lot of battery components side by side in a very small space, and we connect them with tightly packed, long wavy lines," said Huang. "These wires provide the flexibility. When we stretch the battery, the wavy interconnecting lines unfurl, much like yarn unspooling. And we can stretch the device a great deal and still have a working battery."