Energy storage incorporated directly into fabric

New types of wearable electronic devices could be developed from capacitors and other charge storage components formed from fabric into which graphene and related materials are directly incorporated, according to researchers from the Cambridge Graphene Centre, collaborating with colleagues at Jiangnan University in China. The technology relies on standard techniques for dying polyester fabric with inks made by solution processing techniques.

In a paper in the journal Nanoscale, Felice Torrisi of the Graphene Centre and colleagues explain that while other techniques to incorporate electronic components into textiles depend on components mounted on plastics that cannot be washed and are uncomfortable to wear, the new technique creates electric circuits by “simply overlaying different fabrics made of two-dimensional materials” onto polyester.

The researchers suspended graphene sheets in a low boiling point solvent to make the ink, which can be dyed onto polyester. Overlaying this fabric with fabric similarly dyed with hexagonal boron nitride, another two-dimensional conductive material, creates an active region that works as a capacitor, enabling charge storage. The fabric remains bendable, breathable, and can withstand cycles in a normal washing machine.