Printed Textile-Based Silver-Zinc Battery for Wearable Electronics

Description

Wearable electronics are playing an important role in the health care industry. Various health indicators such as body temperature, peripheral capillary oxygen saturation (SpO2) level, and electrocardiogram etc. are monitored noninvasively in real time by using wearable medial electronic devices. The wearable devices can be directly attached to human body surface or embedded into garments. To power the wearable devices, it is essential to develop textile-based wearable power sources or batteries. In the context of wearable electronics, conventional power sources such as coin cells, AA and AAA batteries etc. are bulky and create inconvenience to the users. In the literature, different types of textile-based lithium batteries have been reported. In this work, we demonstrate a printed textile-based silver-zinc battery which is suitable for wearable electronics. The proposed battery can be used in developing various wearable health care applications such as smart bandages and sensors etc. A synthetic woven fabric namely polyester is used as a textile substrate. The silver-zinc batteries are printed in different configurations on the textile substrate using stencil printing method. The printed batteries are characterized by using electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) and cyclic voltammetry.