Researchers at Stanford University are working to take the same battery technology they developed for ink and paper to produce a battery that could be worn in everyday clothing. The research team, headed by Yi Cui, noticed a strong and growing interest in lightweight, flexible, and wearable electronics and decided to develop a new type of battery that would fulfill the ever-increasing technological demands of today’s world.
With an extremely simple “dipping and drying” process using single-walled carbon nanotube (SWNT) ink, we produced highly conductive textiles with conductivity of 125 S cm−1 and sheet resistance less than 1 Ω/sq. Such conductive textiles show outstanding flexibility and stretchability and demonstrate strong adhesion between the SWNTs and the textiles of interest. Supercapacitors made from these conductive textiles show high areal capacitance, up to 0.48F/cm2, and high specific energy. We demonstrate the loading of pseudocapacitor materials into these conductive textiles that leads to a 24-fold increase of the areal capacitance of the device. These highly conductive textiles can provide new design opportunities for wearable electronics and energy storage applications. -Yi Cui (Nano Letters)
While there is still a lot of work to be done before the clothing-battery becomes a reality and is made commercially available, we are closer than ever before to the day when recharging the battery for your iPhone or laptop can take place from the very clothing you put on your body. “The ideal wearable power would incorporate textile as a component,” the researchers wrote. “The fabrication process is simple and scalable, similar to those widely used for dyeing fibers and fabrics in the textile industry.”