Scientists Develop Microfiber Fabric to Power Electronics


The shirt you're wearing may one day generate enough power to charge your cell phone or MP3 player. According to Reuters, U.S. scientists have developed a microfiber fabric that is capable of generating its own electricity. Take the fabric and make it into a shirt, and you've got gadget-charging clothing.

"The fiber-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. Technically speaking, Wang's team made the nanogenerator by "coating fibers 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 fibers." Then they added an ultra-thin layer of gold to some of the fibers, which works as a conductor. Wang has estimated that the prototype can generate 80 milliwatts per square meter of this fabric, which is enough to power an iPod or charge a cell phone battery.

The biggest obstacle: zinc oxide degrades when wet, so the scientists must come up with a way to protect the fabric when placed in a washing machine. That is, if the wearer plans on not stinking.

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