A liquid-activated textile battery for wearable biosensors

Abstract

Wearable biosensors is an emerging field which offers great potential for many applications including human health monitoring, environmental sensing and bioagent detection. An important requirement for these systems is the need for robust, lightweight batteries which can be easily integrated with wearable materials (i.e. textiles). In this paper, we demonstrate a new textile Ag-Al battery which is activated by liquids. Experiments were performed to optimize the battery performance by altering the device parameters, such as the electrode/electrolyte area and electrolyte concentration. Based on these results, we developed a single-cell battery that can produce a voltage of 1.3 V. By connecting two cells in series, we could power a 1.6 V LED for up to 30 minutes.