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.
