Wearable Smart Devices are very popular now a day. There are many limitations for developing the wearable smart devices. The battery should be light weight, thin & small power enough to fit into the wearable smart devices. To power up this wearable smart devices, researchers have developed a new design for gathering body heat and converting it into electric energy to power the batteries of wearable small devices. The experimental prototypes are lightweight and can generate far more electricity.
Source: http://gajitz.com/wearable-generator-uses-body-heat-to-power-smart-devices/
Daryoosh Vashaee, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at NC State said that,” Wearable thermoelectric generators (TEGs) generate electricity by making use of the temperature differential between your body and the ambient air”.
Thermoelectric generator (TEG) consists of number of thermocouple. Thermocouple generates electric energy due to temperature difference of two junctions. Here junction means body temperature & ambient temperature. TEG embedded into the fabric of cloth. TEG generates up to 20 μW/cm2 and making it lighter and much more comfortable. The entire system is very thin & light weight.
Source : Wikipedia
The researchers embedded the TEG into T-shirts and found that the T-shirt TEGs were still capable of generating 6 μW/cm2 or more up to 16 μW/cm2, if a person is running and less than 16 μW/cm2 if person is stable. This technology is also very helpful in medical diagnostic to indicate the sign of heart attack, asthma attack etc.
The researchers also said that, this technology is also useful in many industries, where lots of heat is wasted. Rapid development in the field of low power sensors, smartwatches and many more, this technology provides battery free solution to them.