Your Sweaty Finger Can Generate Electricity

That's not a Band-Aid. Instead, it's a thin flexible strip that converts chemicals in human sweat into electrical energy. Best of all, since fingers consistently produce sweat, the device will work even without you having to move a muscle!

The 'passive perspiration biofuel cell' is invented by Joseph Wang, a professor of nanoengineering at UC San Diego, who said to CNET, "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."

Though the amount of electrical energy produced is small, advancement in the technology may one day potentially power low-powered electronics such as wristwatches:

As a subject slept for 10 hours with the device on a fingertip, the wearable collected 400 millijoules of energy, which is enough to provide 24 hours worth of power to an electronic wristwatch (but not a smartwatch). The researchers note that strapping devices to additional fingertips would generate even more energy.

#sweat #perspiration #electricity #chemicalreaction #biofuelcell #nanoengineering

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