Solar powered e-textile takes charging off the wall

The advanced prototype from a team at Nottingham Trent University could see devices charged via apparel and accessories instead of a wall socket.

“This material is a textile solar panel that has the properties of a normal textile,” said project lead Dr Theodore Hughes-Riley, associate professor of Electronic Textiles at the Nottingham School of Art & Design. “It can be deformed like a normal textile, it is breathable, and it is soft to the touch.”

The approximately 5mm by 1.5mm solar cells - which cannot be felt by the wearer - are soldered onto two copper wires and coated with a waterproof polymer before being incorporated into yarn that is woven using long-established weaving techniques into material, which measures 51cm by 27cm.

The silicon cells can harness 400mW of electrical energy from the sun, which can charge a basic mobile phone or smartwatch. Tests showed that the material generated a power output of 335.3mW in 0.86 sunlight. Under 1.0 sun it would generate up to 394mW.