Wearable fabric harnesses kinetic energy from bodily motion for device charging.

Nanoscientists have created a wearable textile that can convert body movement into usable electricity and store it for later use. This innovative fabric could have far-reaching applications, from medical monitoring and smart displays on clothing to helping athletes and their coaches track performance.

The research team responsible for the textile described its operation in a paper published in Nano Research Energy. While people already have access to various electronics that can be worn, the accuracy of wearable sensors is very limited since they only operate in specific locations. However, advanced fabrics would enable a range of health, sports, and activity trackers to be integrated into shirts, pants, underwear, and hats.

One of the primary challenges of existing wearable electronics lies in the limitations of the flexibility and wearability of energy supply components. Also, energy supply units should be easily integrated with the devices and be sustainable amid increased environmental awareness. Besides, storage technologies currently in use have limited storage capacity. Batteries and supercapacitors can store energy, but they cannot produce energy without an external power source.

The researchers, led by Professor Dong and including nanoscientist Feifan Sheng, developed a fiber-TENG structure that takes advantage of the triboelectric effect, which is used to convert body movement into electricity. The fiber-TENG consists of three layers: a polylactic acid layer, a reduced graphene oxide layer, and a polypyrrole layer. When subjected to mechanical deformation such as stretching or bending, the textile generates electric charges that are collected by the polypyrrole layer, which uses them as a power generation unit. The process generates usable electricity that can be used for power generation and storage.

The team developed the graphene oxide fiber to prepare a coaxial fiber-shaped supercapacitor (fiber-SC) for use in energy storage, which enhances the textile’s promise in delivering wearable energy generation and storage. The researchers tested their fiber-TENG textile and found it had high energy density and stability over charge and discharge cycles. They intend to start exploring potential uses of their textile in real-world applications, optimizing the textile’s design and fabrication process, investigating its performance under different conditions, and developing a manufacturing process that can be used in commercial operations beyond the lab.