Scienceblogtwo

Wearable sensors are ubiquitous thanks to wireless technology that enables a person's glucose concentrations, blood pressure, heart rate, and activity levels to be transmitted seamlessly from sensor to smartphone for further analysis. Most wireless sensors today communicate via embedded Bluetooth chips that are themselves powered by small batteries. But these conventional chips and power sources will likely be too bulky for next-generation sensors, which are taking on smaller, thinner, more flexible forms. Now MIT engineers have devised a new kind of wearable sensor that communicates wirelessly without requiring onboard chips or batteries. Their design, detailed today in the journal Science, opens a path toward chip-free wireless sensors. The team's sensor design is a form of electronic skin, or "e-skin" -- a flexible, semiconducting film that conforms to the skin like electronic Scotch tape. The heart of the sensor is an ultrathin, high-quality film of gallium nitrid...

Imagine being able to use commonplace objects like sea salt and a piece of cloth to capture moisture in the air around you in order to generate electricity, or even power commonplace gadgets with a non-toxic battery that is as thin as paper. A new moisture-driven electricity generation (MEG) device has been created by a team of researchers from the College of Design and Engineering (CDE) at the National University of Singapore (NUS). It is made of a thin fabric layer that is about 0.3 millimeters (mm) thick, sea salt, carbon ink, and a unique water-absorbing gel. The foundation of MEG technology is the capacity of various materials to produce electricity through their interaction with atmospheric moisture. Due to the potential for a wide range of practical applications, such as self-powered gadgets like wearable electronics like health monitors, electronic skin sensors, and information storage devices, this field has been attracting increasing interest. Two major issues with existing M...