Novel film keeps wearer cool and powers devices

This is the claim of a team from the National University of Singapore (NUS) whose proof-of-concept device can power an LED. The team’s breakthrough has been reported in Nano Energy.

According to NUS’ Assistant Professor Tan Swee Ching, sweat is mostly composed of water that evaporates from the surface of skin to lower skin temperature.

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“In our new invention, we created a novel film that is extremely effective in evaporating sweat from our skin and then absorbing the moisture from sweat. We also take this one step further - by converting the moisture from sweat into energy that could be used to power small wearable devices,” he said in a statement.

The main components of the novel thin film are cobalt chloride and ethanolamine. Besides being extremely moisture-absorbent, this film can rapidly release water when exposed to sunlight, and it can be ‘regenerated’ and reused over 100 times. To make full use of the absorbed sweat, the NUS team has also designed a wearable energy harvesting device comprising eight electrochemical cells (ECs), using the novel film as the electrolyte. Each EC can generate about 0.57 volts of electricity when they absorb moisture and the NUS team believe the proof-of-concept demonstration illustrates the potential of battery-less wearables powered using human sweat.