Finger wrap could one day let you power up wearables while you sleep
Wearables are so hot right now, with consumers scooping up more than 100 million units of smartwatches, fitness trackers, augmented reality glasses, and similar tech in the first quarter of 2021 alone. Sales in the category increased 34.4 percent in the second quarter from Q2 2020, making it one of the fastest-growing categories of personal electronics.
That rise comes with an increased demand for practical and efficient energy harvesters capable of continuously powering those wearables. Now, a team of engineers at the University of California San Diego has designed a new type of biofuel cell that harnesses energy from the sweat of your fingertips, according to a recent paper published in the journal Joule. The cell can also be integrated with piezoelectric generators to harvest energy from the pressing of the fingertip. The breakthrough could one day make it possible to power up your wearables as you type or sleep.
Most wearable electronics these days are powered by tiny electrochemical storage devices like batteries and supercapacitors, but these are limited in how long they can power the electronics over extended use. In addition to finding clever ways to further reduce the energy consumption of such devices, researchers are looking at energy harvesters as a promising potential solution. Some existing self-powered sensors successfully reduce energy consumption, per the authors, but those devices are unable to power the required signals for efficient data transmission.
