This Biofilm Converts Sweat Into Electricity

University of Massachusetts Amherst engineers have developed a biofilm that can generate continuous electricity from a wearer's sweat.

Cabe Atwell
2 years ago β€’ Wearables
A biofilm-powered sensor worn on the neck. (πŸ“·: Liu et al., 10.1038/s41467-022-32105-6)

Researchers from the University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass) have developed a biofilm that converts evaporating sweat into electricity. The material could revolutionize wearable electronics and power everything from medical sensors to personal electronics.

The secret of producing energy from evaporated perspiration lies within the biofilm itself, as it uses a thin sheet of bacterial cells about the thickness of a sheet of paper, which is produced naturally by an engineered version of the bacteria Geobacter sulfurreducens. The same bacteria have been used to power microbial batteries, but those batteries require that the G. sulfurreducens is cared for and fed a constant diet. Alternatively, the new biofilm can supply as much, if not more, energy than a comparably sized battery and works continuously because it's dead and thus doesn't need to be fed.

In a UMass study, the researchers sandwiched the biofilm between electrodes and a sticky polymer to create a small postage stamp-sized square that can adhere to a user's skin. They found it was capable of powering small electronic devices such as an LCD screen. The team plans to look to increase the size of the biofilms and test the limits of the wearable electronics it could power and eventually power entire electronic systems.

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