The holy grail of technological developments these days is battery life. A recently discovered origami battery may be setting a new standard soon.

The origami battery, developed by Seokheun Choi at Binghampton University, is a bacteria powered battery made from paper.

The battery generates energy from microbial respiration. We're not talking about lots of energy here, rather microwatts. But this should be enough to run paper-based biosensors, which it's been created for. These are sensors typically used in remote areas for disease prevention.

The paper is able to absorb water samples without needing any power, it's the transmission of that data which needs juice. By creating a battery out of the paper itself Choi hopes to offer a complete, self-powered, biosensor. The $300,000 funding he received from the National Science Foundation should help make his vision a reality.

When piled up, like origami, these paper batteries had enough power to run an LED light, says Choi. And adding more shouldn't be an issue as one of these costs a mere 3p to make. The future possibilities for this tech are huge.

While the initial use of these bio-sensing batteries will be for research, we can imagine biosensors for fitness appearing soon too. Goodbye clunky wearables already? We hope so.

Check out all the other exciting battery developments going on right now using the read link below.

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