Interesting Engineering, Jan 23: UMass researchers Trisha Andrew and Linden Allison have come up with a new fabric that can capture energy from body heat to power light wearable devices.
The fabric takes advantage of the “thermoelectric” effect that occurs when the body’s temperature is higher than the ambient air. It has high electrical conductivity along with low thermal conductivity, allowing it to move electrical charges from warmer areas to cooler ones.
“What we have developed is a way to inexpensively vapor-print biocompatible, flexible and lightweight polymer films made of every day, abundant materials onto cotton fabrics that have high enough thermoelectric properties to yield fairly high thermal voltage, enough to power a small device,” said Andrew.