Project description
Powering wearables without batteries
Decarbonising personal electronics requires a shift away from bulky, environmentally costly batteries towards sustainable, self-powering solutions. While harvesting body heat via organic thermoelectric generators offers a flexible and skin-friendly alternative, traditional designs often fail because the human body produces only weak temperature gradients. Supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the t-OTEGs project overcomes this by redesigning heat guidance through ultra-thin materials to create usable lateral temperature differences. This allows for the creation of flexible, printable generators that can be seamlessly integrated into clothing or wearable sensors. The project’s goal is to provide a realistic path to battery-free devices. This approach ensures constant monitoring and connectivity without the maintenance or waste associated with conventional power sources.
Objective
The rise of wearable electronics has driven the demand for innovative energy harvesting solutions that offer sustainable power without relying on bulky batteries. Organic thermoelectric generators (OTEGs), which convert temperature gradients (ΔT) from the body heat into electricity, are promising candidates due to their skin compatibility, flexibility, thinness, and biocompatibility. However, current OTEGs face challenges in being used as wearables because it is difficult to create a ΔT in response to body heat, which typically moves in a vertical direction. State-of-the art 3D OTEG designs addressing this issue often sacrifice the thinness, flexibility and durability—key strengths of traditional OTEGs for wearable applications. To overcome these challenges, we propose transverse OTEGs (t-OTEGs) that generate electricity perpendicular to the heat flow, retaining the inherent advantages of 2D thin-film OTEGs. The key of the t-OTEGs is an engineered dual-κ substrate, composed of materials with different thermal conductivities (κ), which creates a lateral ΔT from orthogonal heat flows, enabling efficient energy conversion in a 2D thin-film platform. The primary goal of this project is to develop wearable t-OTEG technologies that utilize a versatile 2D thin-film platform to harvest the heat emitted by human skin, making them practical for real-world wearable applications and effectively replacing already proposed wearable OTEGs. To achieve this, the research will focus on the development and optimization of the dual-κ substrate, the scalable design of t-OTEGs through advanced printing techniques, and their integration into wearable applications. Successfully completing this project will revolutionize OTEG technology, providing a scalable, sustainable, and flexible power solution for wearable electronics, setting new benchmarks in thermoelectric energy harvesting, and contributing to global sustainability efforts by reducing reliance on disposable batteries.
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Keywords
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2024-PF-01
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
3000 Leuven
Belgium
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.