One of the drawbacks of fitness trackers and other wearable devices is that their batteries eventually run out of juice. But what if in the future, wearable technology could use body heat to power itself?
UW researchers have developed a flexible, durable electronic prototype that can harvest energy from body heat and turn it into electricity that can be used to power small electronics, such as batteries, sensors or LEDs. This device is also resilient — it still functions even after being pierced several times and then stretched 2,000 times.
The team detailed these prototypes in a paper published in Advanced Materials (“3D Soft Architectures for Stretchable Thermoelectric Wearables with Electrical Self-Healing and Damage Tolerance”).
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