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Category: wearables

Molecules stop carbon nanotubes clumping, unlocking record heat-to-electricity performance

QUT researchers have overcome a challenge that has limited next-generation energy-harvesting materials for more than two decades, opening the door to more powerful wearable electronics and new ways of turning wasted heat into electricity. The breakthrough centers on carbon nanotubes, which are flexible, conductive microscopic rods that have long shown promise for wearable technologies but have been difficult to control.

QUT researchers have developed a new molecular strategy that prevents the nanotubes from clumping together and losing performance, enabling a new benchmark for materials that convert heat directly into electricity.

Lead author and QUT PhD researcher Shanshan Zhou said the work established a new way of tackling one of the biggest challenges facing carbon nanotubes.

Mechanical engineers develop buttons that rise with light

No wires. No actuators. Shine light on the metal surface, and it rises like a button. KAIST researchers have developed a metal structure that changes shape using light, without any light-absorbing coating. This technology could open new possibilities for tactile interfaces with physical pop-up buttons, shape displays, next-generation wearable devices and soft robots.

A research team led by Professor Il-Kwon Oh from the Department of Mechanical Engineering has developed a technology that transforms a flat NiTi shape-memory alloy (SMA) sheet into a “photothermally driven meta-morphing structure” that rises from a flat surface into a three-dimensional form when exposed to light, using only a single UV laser process.

The results are published in the journal Advanced Science.

The invisible wearable: New skin sensors advance health monitoring

While wearable health sensors are becoming increasingly common, current iterations are awkward to wear. For example, devices attached to the face can draw unwanted attention, increase self-consciousness and influence the signals users are trying to measure. However, recent research may have found a solution by introducing ultrathin sensors that cannot be seen by observers or felt by the wearer.

In an article published in Science Advances, researchers from the Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo, and collaborating institutions reported developing thin, stretchable on-skin electrodes that are effectively invisible when worn on the face. The new technology can measure biological signals while remaining undetectable by eye and touch, allowing monitoring to take place under more natural conditions.

Biosignals such as eye movements, facial muscle activity and brain activity provide valuable information for health care monitoring and human-machine interaction. However, conventional facial electrodes can alter a person’s appearance and affect social interactions, creating what are called appearance artifacts—changes in behavior or psychological state caused simply by wearing a device that the individual and others can see.

Moisture-driven tech can power green batteries—and destroy spy gear

Researchers from North Carolina State University and Rice University have created a nontoxic, stretchable battery that operates by extracting moisture from the ambient environment—even in climates as dry as the desert. The batteries could be useful in Internet of Things (IoT) applications ranging from wearables to advanced surveillance monitors with built-in kill switches. The study is published in the journal Science Advances.

Emerging technologies like wearable monitors, miniature robotics and other IoT devices require lightweight, flexible power sources. Conventional batteries, which represent the best power source options, are often too rigid and heavy to be useful, and they contain toxic materials that can leak. Energy harvesters, so called because they capture energy from the surrounding environment and convert it into electrical power, are lighter, but their performance is limited.

Running on moisture and salt The new moisture-activated battery (MAB) includes a magnesium anode and a silver/silver chloride cathode, with a cellulose membrane loaded with lithium chloride salts that serves as a separator. The separator harvests moisture from ambient air, which dissolves the salts and creates the electrolyte, allowing charge to flow through the battery.

SensorFM: Towards a general intelligence and interface for wearable health data

We present SensorFM, a foundation model for wearable health pre-trained on more than one trillion minutes of sensor data from five million people. By co-scaling model size and data, SensorFM learns a general-purpose representation of human physiology that transfers to 35 health prediction tasks, supports label-efficient adaptation and data infilling, and can serve as a grounding tool for a Personal Health Agent.

UCSF and Samsung launch remote study on aging brain health

An innovative new study from the Neuroscape research center at UCSF, and consumer electronics giant Samsung seeks to understand decade-by-decade changes in brain health.

The Neuroscape Technology for Aging Health — Digital Approaches (TAH-DA) longitudinal study, seeks to identify biometric predictors of cognitive decline over the course of a year, using Samsung wearable technology.

Samsung fosters innovation and transformational health research in collaboration with leading institutions to explore new health technologies and a novel prescriptive on wellness. The TAH-DA study is another example of Samsung’s work to understand the unique connection between the brain and wellness.

New soft wearable device could support at-home sleep monitoring

Good sleep is essential for brain health. During sleep and rest, the glymphatic system, the brain’s waste-clearing process, helps remove metabolic waste that accumulates during waking hours. This activity is linked to memory processing, cognitive function and neural recovery. When sleep quality is poor, metabolic waste may accumulate, potentially disrupting cognitive function and memory formation.

Traditional approaches to brain monitoring are often invasive, costly and limited to clinical settings. New research from Georgia Tech points to a more accessible approach. A study published in Science Advances shows that a soft, wireless wearable device could help enable home-based monitoring of physiological changes associated with sleep and brain health.

The research team, led by W. Hong Yeo, Peterson Endowed Professor in the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and director of the Wearable Intelligent Systems and Healthcare Center and the Korea KIAT-Georgia Tech Semiconductor Electronics Center, developed a wearable device that uses light-based sensing and wireless communication to support natural sleep monitoring at home.

A New Way To See Life’s Hidden Chemistry: $10 Spectrometer Could Turn Wearables Into Personal Health Labs

Researchers have developed a compact, low-cost convolutional spectrometer that delivers lab-grade precision for applications ranging from industrial quality control to non-invasive health monitoring.

The world’s first ultra-compact semiconductor chip for biosignal measurement

A research team led by Prof. Junghyup Lee of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at DGIST has become the first in the world to develop a “time-interleaved noise-shaping SAR ADC (analog-to-digital converter)” semiconductor chip capable of simultaneously measuring multiple biosignals, including electrocardiograms (ECG) and electromyograms (EMG). The team developed this technology in an actual semiconductor chip and successfully completed functional validation. Their findings were presented at the IEEE Symposium on VLSI Technology & Circuits (VLSI 2026), held in Honolulu, June 14–18.

Accurately measuring multiple biosignals using wearable devices such as smartwatches requires meeting several demanding conditions. These include “ultra-high input impedance (resistance)” to prevent signal loss even when no sweat is present on the skin or when contact is loose (dry or non-contact electrodes), a “wide input range” to prevent signal distortion caused by vigorous movement, and “ultra-low power consumption” for long-term operation. However, conventional measurement approaches have struggled to satisfy all these requirements simultaneously within a single chip.

Lee’s research team addressed this challenge by proposing a novel “time-interleaved third-order noise-shaping SAR ADC” architecture in which circuit blocks that consume significant power and chip area are shared across multiple channels, while only essential components (the residual capacitor banks) are allocated separately to each channel. This approach dramatically reduced the circuit area and power consumption required for multichannel systems, enabling an ultra-compact, ultra-low-power chip.

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