Scientists have developed a “smart fabric” that creates renewable energy
In a world that is continuously looking for smarter and better ways to rely on renewable energy, fashion may be the next industry to contribute to the global change with the new idea of “smart clothes”, a fabric that manages its own energy needs.
Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology in the US and the Beijing Institute of Nanoenergy and Nanosystems in China have made the first hybrid self-charging power textile system that can harvest both solar energy and the mechanical energy from the movements of the person wearing it. The system can easily be woven into textiles for making smart clothes that power mobile and wearable electronics.
The first component in the device harvests solar energy from ambient light and the second the mechanical energy that a person creates as he moves about during normal everyday activities.
Both of these energies can easily be converted into electricity in fiber-shaped dye-sensitized solar cells (F-DSSCs) and fiber-shaped triboelectric nanogenerators (F-TENGs). The combined energy is then stored as chemical energy in a third component, fiber-shaped supercapacitors (F-SCs).
“Since all the components in our new system are shaped like fibers, they can easily be woven into electronic textiles to make smart clothes for driving wearable electronic devices,” explains Zhong Lin Wang, director of the Center for Nanostructure Characterization at Georgia Institute of Technology in the US, who led the team.
The top layer of the system is made up of several F-DSSC units for harvesting solar energy. DSSCs can be tuned to optimally function in a variety of lighting conditions, and so are suitable for indoor and outdoor applications.
The F-SC-based textile for its part forms the bottom layer and each F-DSSC and F-SC unit is connected to one another to form a single F-TENG one.
Due to the triboelectric effect and electrostatic induction, TENGs generate small amounts of electrical power from mechanical motion or external vibrations.
The triboelectric effect occurs when certain materials become electrically charged after they come into moving contact with a surface made from a different material.
The electricity generated by TENGs could replace or supplement batteries for a broad range of potential applications and the technology, which has greatly improved over the last few years, is now good enough to power nanoelectronics devices.
The Georgia-Beijing team is now busy improving the design of its device so that it can make a large-area fabric power cell. They are also looking into the structure’s durability and hoping to make it washable for practical use.