By Gina Roos, editor-in-chief
Targeting next-generation wearables and human-machine interfaces, Purdue University researchers have developed a new fabric technology that allows designers to turn clothing into self-powered electronic textiles (e-textiles) that can be packed with sensors, music players, or illumination displays. The new technique allows designers to turn conventional clothing and fabric into waterproof, breathable, and antibacterial e-textiles.
Purdue researchers said the new technology solves key challenges associated with e-textiles, including battery dependence, breathability, washability, and compatibility with mass production techniques. “It’s like having a wearable remote control that keeps odors, rain, stains, and bacteria away from the user,” said researchers.
Purdue University’s new fabric innovation can power wearable devices using energy harvesting. (Image: Purdue University)
Described in the July 25 edition of Advanced Functional Materials, researchers developed omniphobic triboelectric nanogenerators (RF‐TENGs) by combining embroidery with the spray‐based deposition of fluoroalkylated organosilanes and highly networked nanoflakes, which can embed small electronic components and be used in any fiber-based textile to power wearable devices using energy harvested from human motion.
The advantages of RF‐TENGs include:
- Thin, flexible, breathable (air permeability 90.5 mm s−1)
- High power density (600 µW cm−2)
- Inexpensive to fabricate ( <0.04$ cm−2)
- Repels water, stains, and bacterial growth
- Excellent stability under mechanical deformations
- Washing durability under standard machine‐washing tests
- Compatible with large-scale production processes
- High sensitivity to touch
“For the first time, it is possible to fabricate textiles that can protect you from rain, stains, and bacteria, while they harvest the energy of the user to power textile-based electronics,” said Ramses Martinez, an assistant professor in the School of Industrial Engineering and in the Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering in Purdue’s College of Engineering, in a press release . “These self-powered e-textiles also constitute an important advancement in the development of wearable machine-human interfaces, which now can be washed many times in a conventional washing machine without apparent degradation.”
Purdue University’s waterproof, breathable, and antibacterial self-powered clothing is based on omniphobic triboelectric nanogenerators. (Image: Purdue University)
“While fashion has evolved significantly during the last centuries and has easily adopted recently developed high-performance materials, there are very few examples of clothes on the market that interact with the user,” Martinez added. “Having an interface with a machine that we are constantly wearing sounds like the most convenient approach for a seamless communication with machines and the internet of things.”
The Purdue Research Foundation Office of Technology Commercialization holds the patent to the technology. The researchers are looking for partners to test and commercialize the technology.
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