Wearable Thermoelectric Power Generators Combined With Flexible Supercapacitor for Low-Power Human Diagnosis Devices

Abstract

This paper presents a wearable thermoelectric power generator using body heat to supply power to low-power human diagnosis devices (especially sensor nodes), thus a new type of thermoelectric generator (TEG) integrated into clothes that combines the TEG technology with fashion sports equipment: wrist guards, leg guards, headbands, and sports tights is also proposed. As a result of this integration, any difference in the appearance of a wearable thermoelectric power generator is not significant when compared with the original clothing. Through the design and experiment of wearable TEG, here several key factors that affect the human body heat energy: ambient temperatures, skin temperatures, wind, human activity, and the connection mode of the TEG module are analyzed. The experimental results show that the power of a single TEG module can reach about 250 μW at 5 °C, while the power of the multiple TEG modules including only four TEG can be close to 1 mW after the integration of sports tight. Finally, the flexible supercapacitor is utilized as the energy storage element, which shows excellent storage character and good effect of conjunction with clothing.