Wearable E-Textile battery can be recharged by sunlight
| (Nanowerk Spotlight) Going hand in hand with the development of wearable electronic e textiles, researchers are also pushing the development of wearable and flexible battery energy storage to power those e-textiles. For instance, as we reported in a previous Nanowerk Spotlight (“Nanotechnology T-Shirt to replace batteries? Towards wearable energy storage”), scientists demonstrated that flexible cotton threads can be used as a platform to fabricate a cable-type supercapacitor. In another recent Spotlight we described the concept of foldable Li-ion batteries. | |
| Going one step further, a research team in Korea has now developed wearable e textile batteries that can be integrated with flexible solar fabric cells and thus be recharged by solar energy. | |
| Reporting their work in the October 28, 2013 online edition of Nano Letters (“Wearable E Textile Battery Rechargeable by Solar Energy”), the team demonstrates a fully functional wearable E -textile battery by finding unconventional materials for all of the key battery components and integrating them systemically: Nickel-coated polyester yarn as a current collector for efficient stress release, polyurethane binder for strong adhesion of active materials, and polyurethane separator with superior mechanical, electrochemical, and thermal properties. |
