A team of researchers at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia has created a totally edible and rechargeable battery, starting from materials that are normally consumed as part of our daily diet. The proof-of-concept battery cell has been described in a paper published in the Advanced Materials journal. The possible applications are in health diagnostics, food quality monitoring, and edible soft robotics.
The research was conducted by the team led by Mario Caironi, coordinator of the Printed and Molecular Electronics Laboratory at the IIT Center in Milan, Italy. Caironi has been dedicated to investigating the electronic properties of food and its by-products, with the goal of combining them with edible materials to create new, cutting-edge edible electronic materials.
The battery cell operates at 0.65 V, a voltage low enough not to create problems in the human body when ingested. It can provide a current of 48 μA for 12 minutes, or a few microamps for more than an hour, enough to supply power to small electronic devices, such as low-power LEDs, for a limited time.