Body-based capacitive coupling and conductive channel power transfer for wearable and implant electronics

Abstract

Wearable and implant electronic devices have been widely utilized for healthcare and medicine. However, powering these devices for long duration with stable performance is extremely challenging. Here, we propose a body-based capacitive coupling and conductive channel power transfer (BC4PT) technology for this application. The BC4PT could unintentionally harvest the 50/60 Hz electricity using daily electronic devices. Large stray capacitances exist between electronic device such as phones and hand. When a person uses a plugged-in device, a high amount of 50/60 Hz electricity could be coupled to the hand, and transferred to wearable devices via the body conductive channel. The BC4PT could light up a 120 LEDs array directly, charge a 1mF capacitor to ∼ 23 V in 10 min. The harvested energy is utilized to power a wireless multivariable physiological sensor chip continuously or an implant device via the resonance-coupled wireless power transmission. The technology has a great application prospect for the self-powered wireless wearable and implant systems.