Scientists have recently created a double-layered fabric out of silver-coated woven textile that can charge the battery of a mobile phone.
According to a new study by Sungkyunkwan University in South Korea, a game-changing foldable patch of fabric wrapped around a person's wrist can gather enough energy from arm movement to power small electronic devices, Discovery News reported.
The new fabric relies on the triboelectric effect, which occurs when certain materials become electrically charged after coming into frictive contact with a different material. Electrons are transferred from one material to the other, causing one material to build up a positive charge, while the other gets a negative charge.
One layer was made with a plain silver-coated textile. For the other layer, the team grew 100-nm-wide zinc oxide nanorods on the woven textile fibers and coated the rods with polydimethylsiloxane. The team stacked four triboelectric generators to increase the power output.
The researchers are testing more materials for the generator that could potentially yield even more power, as well as textile-based batteries and supercapacitors to store energy from the generators.