A soft material that converts body heat into electricity could pave the way for self-powered wearable devices, according to a new study.
Researchers at Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Brisbane, Australia, found that a soft hydrogel was able to capture wasted heat and turn it into usable electrical power with “record efficiency”.
Low-grade heat is widely distributed in industrial processes, the environment and even the human body, accounting for a significant share of global energy loss. In their research, the team investigated how efficiently a soft hydrogel material could convert this wasted heat into electricity using the thermal diffusion process known as the Soret effect.
The hydrogel achieves this by controlling how charged particles move through a soft polymer network, allowing the material to efficiently generate electricity from small temperature differences, such as the heat naturally produced by the human body.
Professor Zhi-Gang Chen, professor of energy materials...