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Fiber-Powered Wearables

Watch this video to learn how a development in fiber power sources — submillimeter-thin battery and photovoltaic strands that could be woven directly into fabrics — opens up a new world of wearable electronics and smart textiles.

“As demands for electronic textiles change, there is a need for smaller power sources that are reusable, durable and stretchable,” said Konstantinos Gerasopoulos  , assistant program manager for physics, electronic materials and devices at APL and lead investigator of this project. “Our vision is to develop solar harvesting fibers that can convert sunlight to electricity and battery fibers that can store the generated electricity in the textile.”

Topics:
Batteries Electrification Electronics Materials Power

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    Transcript

    00:00:03 So lately there has been a big push to develop electronic textiles. Essentially, you can imagine a computer on a fabric. Wearable device that use the textile as a platform to perform functions such as sensing, communication, display. Our vision is to develop solar harvesting fibers that can convert sunlight into electricity, and then a battery fiber that can store the generated electricity on the textile. The vast majority of people working on fiber batteries have only demonstrated them really on the lab scale, maybe a few inches long.

    00:00:38 So from the very beginning, we were always designing with roll to roll compatibility in mind. We need to be able to run all our processes continuously, or else what we develop isn't relevant. High level obstacles on turning current batteries into fiber level batteries are the construction method of the batteries themselves, and the limitations on how they are actually fabricated. Here at APL, we're actually only making a single laminate layer of the battery. And then what we're doing is narrowing the width of that battery down until it's actually approaching the width of hair.

    00:01:13 You can imagine shrinking solar panels on the rooftop into this tiny solar fiber is very challenging. So to overcome that challenge, we came up with a new approach where we cut those rigid solar cells into tiny devices and mount those devices on a very flexible fiber substrate. We demonstrate the durability of the fibers by subjecting them under thousands of cycles of bending, so the fibers at the end could become flexible enough so we can use them in a textile fabrication.

    00:01:49 In regards to having batteries as fibers and solar photovoltaics as fibers, both can coexist in the same garment when woven together. And then you can bring the energy from the photovoltaics to the storage fibers, and then to route the storage fibers to actually collect data, drive a sensor, and then communicate that out. The idea of this garment is that it would essentially be self charging. So having something like this where all you have to do is put a piece of clothing on. People will use it because as our society is getting more

    00:02:22 electrified and battery power is just critical. At APL, we have developed components for all these critical technologies and we have achieved some of the best performing devices that have been reported to date.