Integrated Papertronic Techniques: Highly Customizable Resistor, Supercapacitor, and Transistor Circuitry on a Single Sheet of Paper.

Humanity's excessive production of material waste poses a critical environmental threat, and the problem is only escalating, especially in the past few decades with the rapid development of powerful electronic tools and persistent consumer desire to upgrade to the newest available technology. The poor disposability of electronics is especially an issue for the newly arising field of single-use devices and sensors, which are often used to evaluate human health and monitor environmental conditions, and for other novel applications. Though impressive in terms of function and convenience, usage of conventional electronic components in these applications would inflict an immense surge in waste and result in higher costs.

A sweat-activated, wearable microbial fuel cell for long-term, on-demand power generation.

In this work, we enabled on-demand, long-functioning, sweat-based power generation through a wearable paper-based microbial fuel cell (MFC) using a novel spore-forming biocatalyst, Bacillus subtilis. The MFC is sustainable and survivable even in the extreme environmental conditions of human skin. B.