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Zebra stripes inspire a new wearable technology

Swatches | July 1, 2023 | By:

A thermal image taken of zebras at the London Zoo shows that their legs are cooler than their head and neck and especially their mane. The red stripes correspond to the zebra’s visible black stripes, which retain heat from the sun longer than the white stripes. Scientists have learned that the animal can raise the black hairs to help release heat. Photo: Steve Lowe, donated to the London Zoo

Research on zebra stripes in the last few years has shown that the animals can raise the fur of their black stripes to transfer heat away from the skin for temperature regulation. This has inspired scientists to create a device that produces electricity using the contrasting shades as thermal conductors. Researchers at the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST) in South Korea have developed a flexible, biodegradable fiber-type thermoelectric generator (TEG), which uses the black and white sections to create a temperature gradient below the surface, which in turn can generate electricity.

Professor Young Min Song says this type of TEG is “scalable, integrable and sustainable,” making it also more environmentally friendly. Although the lab model was a small prototype, it can generate continuous electricity 24 hours a day, and the materials were completely biodegraded in saline within 35 days. The study was published in the journal Science Advances.

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