Textile batteries coming very soon - Sewn into future clothing powering your devices 11/13/2013 - 00:00 With the launch of Google Glass and the Samsung Galaxy Gear wristwatch this year, wearable electronics have moved from abstract concepts to tangible products. To integrate these electronic devices seamlessly into clothing, watchbands, and backpacks, some engineers are developing flexible, powerful textile-based batteries. Now researchers in South Korea have builtone of the most durable wearable batteries to date on polyester fabric (Nano Lett. 2013, DOI: 10.1021/nl403860k). The battery, which the researchers sewed into a shirt, can be folded 10,000 times without losing function.Most attempts to make textile batteries have had limited success, says materials scientist Jang Wook Choi of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). The problem has been finding battery materials that can retain high function while being bent repeatedly. For example, batteries with metal foils as electrodes can bend only a few times before breaking. Electrodes made by dipping cloth in nanoparticle inks, such as solutions of carbon nanotubes, are more durable than the foils, but the electrical resistance of these cloth electrodes is relatively high, which limits the size of the batteries and the total amount of energy they can store.
