TECHNOLOGY FOR CHANGE

'Power Suit' Takes on a New Meaning

Salvatore Salamone | Date: 01-22-10 | Comments

E-textiles, or textiles with the ability to store electricity, could turn clothes into a mobile power source for electronics equipment. Just recharge your clothes at night and they will charge smartphones, portable MP3 players or other devices during the day.

Need to charge that smartphone when you�re away from home? If a new development in conductive textiles pans out, it might be as simple as plugging the device into your shirt, pants or suit. And then all you have to do is recharge your clothes overnight to have a fresh charge for the next day.

Such capabilities might be possible if research announced this month by a team of Stanford University material scientists can move from the lab to a commercial product.

In an American Chemical Society Nano Letters piece published this month, the researchers describe a new process for making e-textiles that use electrically conductive carbon fibers (nanotubes). When these fibers are infused in cotton and polyester fabrics, the result is a textile with the ability to store electricity.

With this capability, clothes made from e-textiles can be turned into a mobile power source for electronics equipment�the idea being that clothing can be charged up and that stored electricity can be used to recharge a smartphone, portable MP3 player or other device.

The science and technology news site Physorg.com reports that an additional benefit is that even with the carbon fibers added, the material retains cotton�s and polyester�s desirable characteristics of flexibility and stretchability.

�Wearable electronics represent a developing new class of materials with an array of novel functionalities, such as flexibility, stretchability and lightweight, which allow for many applications and designs previously impossible with traditional electronics technology,� said the researchers. For example, beyond charging electronics devices, novel applications envisioned include wearable displays and embedded health monitoring systems.

Wearable electronics applications like these and others are not a new concept. In fact, the broader market that encompasses smart fabrics, e-textiles and intelligent technology for textile materials has been growing by about 28 percent annually. In 2009, the market for such technology and materials was estimated to be $642.1 million, according to market research and strategic and technical consulting firm IntertechPira.

But the work by the Stanford team takes a new direction than that of many past efforts.

For instance, one approach to wearable electronics has been to sew conductive material into, for example, a jacket or shirt. This technique has been used to demonstrate ways to provide connectivity between, for example, an MP3 player plugged into a docking jack in a pocket and a set of headphones plugged into a jack in a sleeve. Similarly, wearable display and illuminated clothing has been proposed and developed by integrating LEDs into articles of clothing.

The new technology proposed by the Stanford team would take such efforts to a new level by infusing the conductive material into the clothing�s fabric itself. And according to the researchers, there�s one more benefit to their approach: The fabric kept its electrical properties under conditions that simulated repeated laundering. So the clothes are wash and wear, too.