Scientists have come up with a device that harvests sweat from your fingertip to generate power. The flexible, thin strip wraps around the tip of a fi

This device turns your sweaty finger into a gadget charger

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2021-07-26 05:00:07

Scientists have come up with a device that harvests sweat from your fingertip to generate power. The flexible, thin strip wraps around the tip of a finger like a Band-Aid and converts chemicals found in human sweat into small amounts of electrical energy. Fingers constantly produce sweat, so the device can work without the wearer moving a muscle.

"By using the sweat on the fingertip -- which flows out naturally regardless of where you are or what you're doing -- this technology provides a net gain in energy with no effort from the user," said Joseph Wang, a professor of nanoengineering at UC San Diego and co-author of a paper describing the product, published Tuesday in the journal Joule.

It's common for self-powered wearable systems that rely on bioenergy harvesters to require excessive inputs of energy. But because this device doesn't require any physical input from the wearer to work, it's "a step forward to making wearables more practical, convenient and accessible for the everyday person," study co-author Lu Yin, a nanoengineering Ph.D. student at UC San Diego, said in a statement. UC San Diego researchers previously worked on temporary tattoos that turn sweat to power .

While the new product can produce power, it's not time to kick your tangly cords and finicky electrical outlets to the curb just yet. The device can potentially power lower-power electronics that operate in the milliwatt range, such as a wristwatch, but it's not yet suitable for continuously powering high-performance electronics such as smartphones, the researchers say.