Wearable Human-Body Energy Harvesting and Storage to Power Smart Healthcare Textiles

Project Synopsis

Nowadays, the rapid advancement in wearable electronics has emerged a new era of wearable healthcare monitoring devices in forms of smart watches, smart textiles, etc. One of the basic requirements of these wearable devices is the power resource which should be provided by a longlasting and dynamically charging energy storing unit. Furthermore, in case of healthcare smart textiles, the energy storing units need to be conformal to the soft human body, skin, or organs. Herein, a wearable humanbody energyharvesting and storage unit has been proposed for smart textiles consisting of (a) a series of fabricbased energy harvesting systems using piezo and triboelectricity concepts that can convert biomechanical motions of the body to electrical energy, and (b) a series of energystoring units using flexible supercapacitors with high capacitance storage properties.

Project Objective

To provide an indepth knowledge development and prototype platform for initiating a series of selfpowered wearable gadgets, especially for healthcare monitoring and diagnosing textile systems. The proposed solution will help to increase the quality of a patients life by providing healthcare tools with longlife durability power. This will not only help the users to continuously monitor their health status without any power interruptions, but also will open new doors in manufacturing selfpowered wearable sensors, biosensors, and therapeutic devices and smart textiles.