Wearable medical devices such as continuous heart rate monitors, insulin pumps, Al medical monitors, biosensors, and neural stimulators usually need access to a power source for functioning. Our body emits a great deal of energy that is generally wasted. This energy can now be harvested to power medical devices with the help of triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs). Researchers at Purdue University have shown that polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) can be used to produce efficient TENGs that can harvest power and act as health activity monitoring aids.
Triboelectric devices are built with optimized PVA‐gelatin films that exhibit stable and robust triboelectricity outputs. Such wearable devices can detect the skin deformation induced by pulse and accurately capture the cardiovascular information encoded in the pulse signals. This has opened doors to using the technology in producing functional…
