Designing Feature-Rich Wearable Health and Fitness Devices

The next step in wearables is to shrink the size of the devices while offering more comfortable shapes and additional features and wireless communications capabilities.

‘Candy Cane’ Polymer Weave Could Power Future Functional Fabrics and Devices

If scientists are ever going to deliver on the promise of implantable artificial organs or clothing that dries itself, they’ll first need to solve the problem of...

Engineers Develop Flexible Lithium Battery for Wearable Electronics

A team of engineers has developed a prototype Li-ion battery that obtains both good flexibility and high-energy density. It allows remarkable flexibility, high energy...

Flexible Batteries Make Dental Aids ‘Smart’

Smart 3D printed braces that incorporate nontoxic batteries and lights could reduce the time and costs involved in realigning and straightening teeth.

Quality Assurance: Risk Mitigation for Lithium-Ion Battery Packs

Safety and reliability are the key concerns when determining the right power source for a medical device. Lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries are often considered for their higher...

Transient Battery Self-Destructs When Dropped in Water

A self-destructing, lithium-ion battery from Iowa State University delivers 2.5 volts and dissolves or dissipates in 30 minutes when dropped in water.

Enhancing Lithium Ion Batteries with Hydrogen

Batteries can last longer after hydrogen treatment. Scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) say that lithium ion batteries can operate longer as well as faster when their...

Powering Tomorrow’s Medicine: Critical Decisions for Batteries in Medical Applications

Technological advancements are making medical devices increasingly feature-rich and miniaturized: two performance characteristics that are inherently...

Wireless Charging and Energy Harvesting to Revolutionize Medical Implants

Semiconductor chip technology has miniaturized by leaps and bounds over the past couple of decades, enabling the modern era we live in with smartphones, tablets, and...

Germanium Nanowires Could Improve Batteries

A team of scientists at Missouri University of Science and Technology, Rolla, developed a one-step approach to growing germanium nanowires from an aqueous solution. They say that their process may...

Powering the Drive toward Smarter Wearables for Healthcare

Wearable devices continue to fuel a fast-growing drive toward more comprehensive services in health and fitness. Propelling this growth, the combination of market need and technological...

Pomegranate Inspires Battery Design

Researchers at Stanford University and the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory has invented an electrode designed like a pomegranate with silicon nanoparticles clustered like seeds...

Lithium Batteries for Medical Applications

The element lithium possesses fundamental properties that make it ideal for use as the anode in both primary and rechargeable batteries. Vendors have paired the popular lithium anode with a variety of...

Electrocardiography (ECG) Necklace

Integrated wearable monitoring systems based on body area networks (BANs) enable continuous, reliable, and long-term monitoring of physio- and biological signals on the move, leading to wearable health...

Design Considerations for Battery Connectors

The future of batteries, like that of so many medical devices they power, is clearly toward smaller, lighter, and more powerful models. Developing concurrently with these new battery designs are...