Make your own electricity...

14 February 2008 14:50 - (SA)


Chicago - US scientists have developed a microfibre fabric that generates its own electricity, making enough current to recharge a cellphone or ensure that a small MP3 music player never runs out of power.

If made into a shirt, the fabric could harness power from its wearer simply walking around or even from a slight breeze, they reported on Wednesday in the journal Nature.

"The fibre-based nanogenerator would be a simple and economical way to harvest energy from the physical movement," Zhong Lin Wang of the Georgia Institute of Technology, who led the study, said in a statement.

The nanogenerator takes advantage of the semiconductive properties of zinc oxide nanowires - tiny wires 1 000 times smaller than the width of a human hair - embedded into the fabric.

The wires are formed into pairs of microscopic brush-like structures, shaped like a baby-bottle brush.

One of the fibres in each pair is coated with gold and serves as an electrode. As the bristles brush together through a person's body movement, the wires convert the mechanical motion into electricity.

"When a nanowire bends it has an electric effect," Wang said. "What the fabric does is it translates the mechanical movement of your body into electricity."

His team made the nanogenerator by first coating fibres with a polymer, and then a layer of zinc oxide. They dunked this into a warm bath of reactive solution for 12 hours. This encouraged the wires to multiply, coating the fibres.

"They automatically grow on the surface of the fibre," Wang said. "In principal, you could use any fibre that is conductive."


More at: News24.com

Sounds like a good idea, just don't try to repair your PC whilst wearing your nanowire shirt!

What happens when the fabric is washed? Mainly because water is split with electricity, and I'd rather not have my washer blowing up from hydrogen/oxygen buildup and a small spark in the washer.

and what happens if you get caught out in the rain whilst wearing your nano suit?

_Taz_ wrote:

and what happens if you get caught out in the rain whilst wearing your nano suit?

You end up like a bucket of KFC

This sounds like really interesting technology. Probably will be super expensive though.

_Taz_ wrote:

and what happens if you get caught out in the rain whilst wearing your nano suit?

Not sure, by the sounds of it, it provides only a little bit of energy. Not sure if it'd be enough to harm you or not.

My first thought was , what happens with the electromagnetic currents that would surely be created around the one wearing this t-shirt ?

Yeah sounds really cool
But there are quite a bit of other stuff to get around first, such as washing