My first thought was obviously… hmmm wonder if it could work subdermal
Not my wheelhouse though….
I can guess biofilms in a subdermal environment could be problematic either for efficiency or possibly toxicity… which brings us back to battery chemistry
edit
On reading it again, I didn’t catch the bit about it using evaporation in the process… thats probably a deal breaker right there
Still cool stuff, and if we are day dreaming… if we could nail down a method of transdermally transmitting the power, conductive tattoo ink or some kind metal medium
I’d still be just fine with wearing a patch on the top of my skin, powering something underneath
Issues with anything even kinda like this inside of the body is you probably need direct contact or light. 2 things not easily possible inside the body.
The most important question with these types of articles is how much power is actually being created. Researchers rarely invent a new mechanism of action, they just do it in a novel way. The hydrovoltaic effect is an understood phenomena with pros and cons. Here’s the relevant electrical specs.
So this can generate 1uW/cm². For comparison the Widetronix betavoltaics can generate 3uW/cm² and that glucose fuel cell we talked about recently can generate 48uW/cm². A photovoltaic cell could hypothetically provide 150mW/cm². Honestly it kind of surprised they got the LED display to power up. They did use a large surface area in direct contact with water and lasered the surface into 6 series segments to get the necessary voltage though.
