14 DAY TRIAL // In a new report in the American Chemical Society's journal ACS Nano, a team of researchers detail their work developing a new generation of high-tech clothes able to generate energy from the body's natural movements and use it to power wearable devices.
The scientists, led by specialist Sang-Woo Kim, imagine using such clothes to power not just fancy watches and the like but also medical devices that, although well equipped to save lives, are not yet as popular as they should be simply because they draw power from short-lived batteries.
A new generation of high-tech clothes this way comes
Writing in the journal ACS Nano, researcher Sang-Woo Kim and his team detail that, looking to create clothes that harvest energy from the body's natural movements and use it to power wearable devices, they turned their attention to so-called triboelectric nanogenerators.
Sometimes referred to only as TNGs, triboelectric nanogenerators are essentially miniature generators designed in such ways that they can harvest energy from regular, everyday motion. To make their own TNG fabric, the scientists coated a silvery textile with nanorods and a silicon-based organic material.
When four such pieces of TNG fabric were carefully placed one on top of the other and pressed, the energy originating from the applied pressure was successfully captured and used to power not just light-emitting diodes but also a liquid crystal display and a car's door-opening remote.
What's more, the scientists who carried out these experiments say that their layers of TNG fabric kept harvesting energy and using it to power the consumers they had been entrusted to keep up and running for well over 12,000 cycles.
Potential uses for this innovative technology
As mentioned, scientist Sang-Woo Kim and fellow researchers hope to soon figure out a way to use their TNG fabric to make actual clothes that can harvest the energy produced by their wearer's natural body movements and use it to power wearable electronics.
The idea is to use this technology to make wearables more appealing by eliminating the need to fit such devices with batteries. The high-tech clothes Sang-Woo Kim and his team have in mind would power not just state-of-the-art electronic watches and the like but also medical devices.
“The potential of wearable electronics extends far beyond the flashy and convenient. Small, lightweight devices could play life-changing roles as robotic skin or in other biomedical applications,” explain the scientists behind this ambitious project.
