STRETCHY BIOFUEL CELL TO POWER WEARABLES FROM YOUR SWEAT
For years, wearables have had something of a power conundrum.
Without a bulky and annoying rechargeable battery, there's no way to supply
components with the energy they need to operate.
But now engineers at the University of California San Diego
claim to have made a breakthrough. They have developed a biofuel cell that can
extract enough energy from the body's sweat to power electronics like LEDs and
Bluetooth radios.
Using a combination of chemistry, advanced materials and
electronic interfaces, their fuel cell delivers ten times more power per
surface area than any existing wearable biofuel cell.
The challenge came in increasing the cell's energy density. “We
needed to figure out the best combination of materials to use and in what ratio
to use them,“ said Amay Bandodkar, one of the first authors on a paper
describing the technology, published in Energy & Environmental Science.
In tests, the team hooked up the cell to a custom made circuit
board and had a team of volunteers cycle on a stationary bike. They were able
to power a blue LED for about four minutes. The team says that it's hoping to
improve that lifespan by figuring out a way to store the energy produced and
then release it gradually. They'd also like to replace the silver oxide used in
the cathode, which degrades over time, with something more stable.
techradar.com
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