Power Your Electronics with Sweat

Hackster Staff
Aug 24, 2017 · 2 min read

How many times has it happened to you — you go to the gym, hop on the treadmill, only to find that your phone, Bluetooth headset, or MP3 player, has run out of battery. If only there was some way to power these devices through the energy you’ll be expending!

Well, researchers at the University of California San Diego are one step closer to making this a reality, with a stretchable biofuel cell that extracts energy from human sweat.

The biofuel cell can stretch and flex, conforming to the human body. (📷: UCSD Jacobs)

Using lithography, the engineers built a stretchy electronic foundation out of gold and screen printed a 3D carbon nanotube structure on top the anodes and cathodes. They also loaded the cell with an enzyme that oxidizes the lactic acid found in sweat to generate a current.

In order to be compatible with today’s wearable devices, the biofuel cell needs to be stretchable and flexible. Due to a novel “bridge and island” arrangement of its internal components, the cell can conform to a person’s skin without deforming the anodes and cathodes.

The circuit board is a DC/DC converter that evens out the power generated by the fuel cells, which fluctuates with the amount of sweat produced by a user, and turns it into constant power with a constant voltage. (📷: UCSD Jacobs)

So far, the cell has been hooked up to a custom circuit board and used to power an LED via a person cycling on a stationary bike, but perhaps this tech could one day be used to keep your phone charged or even power safety lights while running!

You can read more about UCSD’s impressive project here, and see additional photos on the team’s Flickr album.

Hackster Blog

Hackster.io, an Avnet community, is the world’s largest network for hardware & software developers. With 1 million members and 17,000+ projects, beginners and professionals can learn and share how to build robotics, industrial automation systems, AI-powered machines, and more.

)
Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade