SphereBy Julie Steenhuysen
CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. scientists have developed a microfiber fabric that generates its own electricity, making enough current to recharge a cell phone or ensure that a small MP3 music player never runs out of power.
If made into a shirt, the fabric could harness power from its wearer simply walking around or even from a slight breeze, they reported Wednesday in the journal Nature.
"The fiber-based nanogenerator would be a simple and economical way to harvest energy from the physical movement," Zhong Lin Wang of the Georgia Institute of Technology, who led the study, said in a statement.
The nanogenerator takes advantage of the semiconductive properties of zinc oxide nanowires -- tiny wires 1,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair -- embedded into the fabric. The wires are formed into pairs of microscopic brush-like structures, shaped like a baby-bottle brush.
One of the fibers in each pair is coated with gold and serves as an electrode. As the bristles brush together through a person's body movement, the wires convert the mechanical motion into electricity.
"When a nanowire bends it has an electric effect," Wang said in a telephone interview. "What the fabric does is it translates the mechanical movement of your body into electricity."
His team made the nanogenerator by first coating fibers with a polymer, and then a layer of zinc oxide. They dunked this into a warm bath of reactive solution for 12 hours. This encouraged the wires to multiply, coating the fibers.
"They automatically grow on the surface of the fiber," Wang said. "In principal, you could use any fiber that is conductive." Continued...
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