Power shirt

Nanotechnology researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a means of generating electricity from pairs of textile fibres covered with zinc oxide nanowires.

The researchers say that combining the current from many such fibre pairs woven into a shirt or jacket could allow the wearer’s body movement to power a range of portable electronic devices.

'If we can combine many fibres in double or triple layers in clothing, we could provide a flexible, foldable and wearable power source that, for example, would allow people to generate their own electrical current while walking,' said Zhong Lin Wang, a Regents professor in the School of Materials Science and Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

The microfibre-nanowire hybrid system builds on a nanowire nanogenerator that Wang’s research team announced in April 2007. That system generates current from arrays of vertically-aligned zinc oxide (ZnO) nanowires that flex beneath an electrode containing conductive platinum tips. The nanowire nanogenerator was designed to harness energy from environmental sources such as ultrasonic waves, mechanical vibrations or blood flow.