Shenyang State Laboratory of Materials Science, Institute of Metals, Chinese Academy of Sciences, has developed new materials that can generate electricity by using body temperature. A single gray soft film sample less than one finger wide and 0.1 mm thick is attached to the wrist of the human body, and the connected measuring meter immediately shows a distinct output voltage.

This high-performance flexible thermoelectric material can achieve the thinnest only tens of microns, and thin film batteries made of it can recycle the waste heat that can be seen everywhere in daily life for power generation, such as using the heat emitted from the lamp shade or human body temperature.

When using human body temperature to generate electricity, when the difference between body temperature and environmental temperature is about 15 degrees Celsius, micro-watt-milliwatt power generation can be realized. The power generation effect increases with the increase of temperature difference, especially when the human body consumes biochemical energy to generate heat or when the average annual temperature in the north is below 20 degrees Celsius. As long as there is a temperature difference, it can generate electricity. The body temperature is higher than the ambient temperature or the ambient temperature is higher than the body temperature.

Thin film batteries made of this new material, i.e. "flexible and tailorable bismuth telluride/cellulose composite thermoelectric thin film batteries", are the first time to combine high performance bismuth telluride thermoelectric materials with low-cost cellulose paper in network structure. They also have excellent deformability and can fully fit the body surface with complex curvature changes. And maintain the temperature difference with the surrounding environment, thereby improving the efficiency of thermal energy conversion, can be applied to a new generation of low-power microsystem power supply technology.