Before you next flush the toilet, consider this: Scientists in Singapore have developed a battery powered by urine.
Researchers at the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology created the credit card-size battery as a disposable power source for medical test kits.
Scientists have been scrambling to create smaller, more efficient, and less expensive "biochips" to test for diseases such as diabetes. Until now, however, similarly small batteries to power the devices remained elusive.
Diagnostic test kits commonly analyze the chemical composition of a person's urine to detect a malady. Ki Bang Lee and his colleagues realized that the substance being tested—urine—could also power the test.
"In order to address this problem, we have designed a disposable battery on a chip, which is activated by biofluids such as urine," Lee wrote in an e-mail to National Geographic News.
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