Wireless battery-free wearable sweat sensor powered by human motion

Sci Adv. 2020 Sep 30;6(40):eaay9842. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.aay9842. Print 2020 Sep.

Abstract

Wireless wearable sweat biosensors have gained huge traction due to their potential for noninvasive health monitoring. As high energy consumption is a crucial challenge in this field, efficient energy harvesting from human motion represents an attractive approach to sustainably power future wearables. Despite intensive research activities, most wearable energy harvesters suffer from complex fabrication procedures, poor robustness, and low power density, making them unsuitable for continuous biosensing. Here, we propose a highly robust, mass-producible, and battery-free wearable platform that efficiently extracts power from body motion through a flexible printed circuit board (FPCB)-based freestanding triboelectric nanogenerator (FTENG). The judiciously engineered FTENG displays a high power output of ~416 mW m-2 Through seamless system integration and efficient power management, we demonstrate a battery-free triboelectrically driven system that is able to power multiplexed sweat biosensors and wirelessly transmit data to the user interfaces through Bluetooth during on-body human trials.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.