Clothing of the future could generate and store solar power Wednesday, 16 November 2016

Clothing and other items made of textiles in the future could act as flexible, solar-powered batteries that never need to be plugged in, thanks to a team at the University of Central Florida who were inspired by the self-lacing Nike sneakers in the movie Back to the Future Part II.

Associate Professor Jayan Thomas, a nanotechnologist at the University of Central Florida’s Nanoscience Technology Centre, said the movie was the inspiration for his filaments that are capable of harvesting and storing the sun’s energy.

“If you can develop self-charging clothes or textiles, you can realise those cinematic fantasies – that’s the cool thing,” he said.

Professor Thomas’ work was published in the academic journal Nature Communications.

In 2015, Professor Thomas received an R&D 100 Award, which is given to the top inventions of the year worldwide, for engineering a cable that can not only transmit energy like a normal cable but also store energy like a battery. Professor Thomas is also working on semi-transparent solar cells that can be applied to windows, allowing some light to pass through while also harvesting solar power.

His latest work builds on his existing research.

“The idea came to me: We make energy-storage devices and we make solar cells in the labs. Why not combine these two devices together?” Professor Thomas explained.

He envisioned technology that could enable wearable tech, and his research team developed filaments in the form of copper ribbons that are thin, flexible and lightweight. The ribbons have a solar cell on one side and energy-storing layers on the other.

The team then bought a small, tabletop loom, and used it to weave the ribbons into a square of yarn.

The proof-of-concept shows that the filaments could be laced throughout jackets or other outwear to harvest and store energy to power phones, personal health sensors and other tech gadgets.

According to Professor Thomas, eliminating the need for a separate battery, and allowing solar filaments to generate and store their own energy, overcomes the main shortcoming of solar cells, where the need for a battery or connected power grid limited its portability.

Thus, the filaments could see major application in the military, by eliminating the supply chain difficulties of providing batteries to the soldiers on the ground, making soldiers’ carried loads much lighter, and allowing their garments to harvest and store energy at the same time if sunlight is available.

There are a host of other potential uses, including electric cars that could generate and store energy whenever they’re in the sun.