Horizontally structured microbial fuel cells in yarns and woven fabrics for wearable bioenergy harvesting

Integration of advanced microbial fuel cell technology with conventional textile processes enables the emergence of wearable bioenergy harvesting techniques fueled by human sweat. However, without a standardized architecture for the fabrication of textile microbial fuel cells, large-scale energy harvesting from the human body with smart textiles remains elusive. In this work, a revolutionary device structure for wearable microbial fuel cells is easily built up on 1-D yarns and on 2-D and 3-D woven fabrics. The microbial fuel cell is horizontally structured on an intrinsic non-conductive yarn where the anodic and the cathodic components are formed between the pristine regions of the yarn as an ion exchange channel. The horizontally structured device in the 1-D yarn is easily scaled up to produce more power by connecting multiple yarn devices in series and parallel. The concept of the horizontally structured microbial fuel cell is extended to 2-D and 3-D wearable textiles by weaving functional yarns. The 1-D yarn device inoculated with Shewanella oneidensis MR-1 produced a maximum power of 452 μA/cm3 and a current density of 47.2 μW/cm3, which are greater than other flexible microbial fuel cells. The 2-D/3-D fabric-based devices improved the output performance enough to power an electrical calculator.