From WiFi to electricity

Imagine a world where smartphones, laptops, wearables and other electronic devices are powered without batteries... Too good to be true? Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have taken a step in that direction with a flexible circuit that can convert the energy from WiFi signals into electricity that can power electronics.

Yes, electrically conductive paint, non-toxic, water based, and water soluble. It might not be the best material to use for traditional circuits. But Electric Paint is perfect for creative work, in designs that work with low DC voltages at low currents and can tolerate some resistivity. It is perfect for creative workshops or for the classroom (no soldering required!). Two kits are available: the Touch Board Pro Kit and the Electric Paint Lamp Kit. Electric Paint is easy to use and makes a perfect gift.

Thinking of electronics in military applications, expensive systems made out of highly robust parts developed in ultra-secure laboratories in top-secret locations come to mind. Whatever you imagine, it will probably not be an Arduino-compatible board running a sketch created from a few buggy open-source libraries produced by a bunch of electronics enthusiasts in their spare time. And yet…

A research team led by faculty at Binghamton University, State University of New York has developed an entirely textile-based, bacteria-powered biobattery that could one day be integrated into wearable electronics. The team, led by Binghamton University Electrical and Computer Engineering Assistant Professor Seokheun Choi, created an entirely textile-based biobattery that can produce maximum power similar to that produced by his previous paper-based microbial fuel cells. Additionally, these textile-based biobatteries exhibit stable electricity-generating capability when tested under repeated stretching and twisting cycles.

A new method for digital design and printing of stretchable, flexible electronics has been developed by a team of researchers from the Air Force Research Laboratory and the Wyss Institute at Harvard University. Hybrid 3D printing, as the scientists call this technique, uses additive manufacturing to integrate soft, conductive inks with a material substrate to create stretchable, wearable electronic devices.

A team of engineers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison) have built the most flexible, fully-functional transistor in the world – and at the same time developed a fast, simple and cheap production process that can easily be scaled up to commercial levels. This new development can open the door to an increasingly 'connected' world…

Engineers and researchers from the University of California (Henry Samuell School of Engineering and Applied Science) and SRI International (an non-profit research and development institute) have developed a thin and flexible component that can be used to cool smartphones and laptops so that overheating can be prevented…

A wearable LED controller. The controller supports Arduino IDE and works with Adafruit Neopixel LED strips and library. All powered by 2x AA batteries.

13.7 nW/Mbit is claimed by Renesas as a record low stand-by power for embedded SRAM. Speed has been retained at 1.8 ns for an active read-out. The firm said it used its in-house 65-nm silicon-on-thin buried oxide (SOTB) process for the prototype, and used substrate biasing to adjust the leakage/speed compromise. The technology is claimed overcome challenges with conventional CMOS, such as the increased leakage with low-threshold transistors and high variability in gate threshold voltage.

A new type of flexible micro-supercapacitors developed by a research team from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore may well sprout developments in the realm of wearable technology, with a variety of applications such as smart T-shirts charging mobile phones.