Converting Body Heat into Electricity
A Korean research team has developed a wearable thermoelement that can generate electric power with body heat. The newly developed device can be used in many ways such as operating battery-free wearable devices.
The Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) announced on Dec. 1 that a research team led by Jeong Seung-jun, a senior researcher at the Soft Convergence Materials Research Center, has developed a flexible thermoelement with strong power generation performance in collaboration with professor Hong Yong-taek of Seoul National University.
Thermoelements are semiconductors that convert heat into electricity. Scientists have attempted to develop wearable thermoelements to utilize body heat as energy but failed because wearable thermoelements perform poorly compared to hard ones. Materials that enhance thermoelements’ performance are mainly hard minerals.
The research team reduced the resistance of thermoelements while increasing their flexibility by linking high-performance inorganic thermoelements to flexible substrates with silver nano-wires. They inflated heat transfer capacity by 800 percent and improved electric power generation more than three times by putting metal particles with high thermal conductivity into flexible substrates. At the same time, the research team has automated the printing process to make mass production of the thermoelements possible.
Thermoelements developed by the research team can be used as high temperature sensors at industrial sites or as distance sensors for self-driving vehicles. They can operate without separate batteries by using temperature differences inside and outside of cars.