Eletric Clothes

Introduction
Domain of Physics

The domain of physics in this topic is Quantum mechanics because its able to harvest energy from motion and
pressure. It is a silvery textile coated with nanorods and a silicon-based organic material. Pressure generated from
pressing down on four cloth pieces were able to power light-emitting diodes, a liquid crystal display and a vehicle’s
keyless entry remote. There are some very interesting possibilities of such technology. Not only could it be used to
power consumer electronics, but the medical field could also benefit from such a portable, integrated energy source.
On the other hand, other efforts have been on integrating solar technology with fabrics. Since the technology’s
original study in 2001, advancements have been made with decreasing weight, breathability, and types of fabrics the
integrated technology can accommodate.

Article Review

Business:
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Stanford University, United States

The Story:

If you want to charge your cell phone just plug in your jeans!

All you have to do is dip a piece of fabric in a solution infused with tiny tubes of carbon, and it turns into a
battery. Simply coating a piece of cotton or polyester with the formulation transforms it into a high performance
energy storage device that is a boost to the emerging field of wearable electronics.

A Breakthrough in Wearable Electronics

Researchers from Wake Forest’s Center for Nanotechnology and Molecular Materials manufactured a clothlike
material that generates electricity using body heat. Generators that produce electricity using heat are
inefficient. However, heat is almost everywhere and is generated by almost everything, even the human body.
Because it is a very common energy source and costs only a little, such as leftover heat produced by engines,
solar energy, or wind energy, then even if it is not efficient, it will be practical. This technology can be used
to charge mp3 players, cell phones, and power medical monitoring equipment. It might even power electronic
implants too, but only if the bodys immune system doesn’t negatively react to it.
Power Felt is a thermoelectric material, meaning that it uses a temperature difference between both of its sides
to generate electricity. Thermoelectric materials also generate heat when supplied with electricity.
Thermoelectric devices are usually rigid, brittle (although flexible versions have been invented recently), and
are composed of bismuth telluride. But Power Felt avoids that drawback.
“Comprised of tiny carbon nanotubes locked up in flexible plastic fibers and made to feel like fabric, Power Felt
uses temperature differences – room temperature versus body temperature, for instance – to create a charge,”
Katie Neal of Wake Forest Universitywrites.
All generators that produce electricity using heat are very inefficient. Despite this poor efficiency, however, heat
is abundant almost everywhere and is generated by all appliances (even the human body), making
thermoelectric generators, which contain no moving parts and can last hundreds of thousands of hours, well
worth developing. Or, at the least, they deserve further research and development.
If an energy source is abundant and can cost as little as nothing, such as the waste heat produced by engines,
solar energy, or wind energy, then even a low efficiency may be practical.
“Since these fabrics have the potential to be cheaper, lighter, and more easily processed than the commonly
used thermoelectric bismuth telluride, the overall performance of the fabric shows promise as a realistic
alternative in a number of applications such as portable lightweight electronics,” the researchers noted in the
research paper.
Potential applications of the Power Felt technology include charging mp3 players, cell phones, and powering
medical monitoring equipment. It would be great if it could power electronic implants too, but that depends on
how the body’s immune system reacts to it.
“Imagine it in an emergency kit, wrapped around a flashlight, powering a weather radio, charging a prepaid cell
phone,” says David Carroll, director of the Center for Nanotechnology and Molecular Materials and head of the
team leading this research.

The approach was first demonstrated by Stanford University in 2009 on plain copying paper, but now it has
been applied to textiles for the first time. “Wearable electronics represent a developing new class of materials...
which allow for many applications and designs previously impossible with traditional electronics technologies,"
the authors wrote in the journal Nano Letters.
The research could pave the way to unobtrusive wearable electronics for use in health monitoring systems, the
fashion and gaming industries, and for any application that requires computers.

A team led by Prof Yi Ciu incorporated single-walled carbon nanotubes - cylinders of carbon about a billionth of
a meter across – into the textiles by a simple dying process.
The dye is made by dispersing carbon nanotubes in water and using sodium dodecylbenzenesulphonate as a
surfactant. The material is dipped into the mixture and then dried in an oven at 120 degrees Celsius for ten
minutes to remove water.
There have been a number of research efforts in recent years that have demonstrated the possibility of
electronics on flexible and transparent surfaces, but applying it to ordinary fabrics has provide problematic –
until now.

Supercharged Clothes

The method is the same as that highlighted in Ciu’s previous work with plain paper; - the small diameter of the
nanotubes make it easy for them to stick to the interwoven fibers of fabric due to van der Waals forces and
hydrogen bonding, and an electrical connection is maintained across the substrate.
The conductivity of the material is increased by simple mechanical pressing and boosted still further by
increases in the number of dipping and drying steps. The fabric maintains its properties when stretched and
pulled and there is no decrease in conductivity - even when it is rinsed in water.

Cotton proved to be up to 3 times better for energy storage than man-made fibers as its porous nature allowed
for better ion transport.
References

https://futurism.com/breakthrough-in-solar-cells-could-lead-to-a-more-stable-efficient-energy-option
https://cleantechnica.com/2012/02/24/imagine-electricity-generating-clothes-but-without-solar-panels-
on
https://www.ideaconnection.com/innovation-in-business/Fabric-Batteries-for-Clothes-that-Can-
Conduct-Electri-00124.html