South Carolina Engineers Creating Cotton T-Shirts For Charging Electronics

Anyone who knows me knows that I am all about maximizing efficiency by wearing whatever I can to hold and charge my devices with minimal weight. My wearable accessories at the moment include a wide range of PowerBag’s by RFA Brands in Michigan and my new found gadget holder the TechSlinger. While the Powerbag has an intricate, modular charging system within the bags I have the TechSlinger puts everything close to my body and is extremely light weight. On days when I’m only using the TechSlinger I use a 16,000mah battery stored in the lower pocket for my iPhone, iPad and whatever Android device I have on me at the moment.

Well, according to our friends over at Boy Genius Report there are some innovative engineers at the University of South Carolina. A team of two engineers being led by Xiadong Li, a professor of mechanical engineering at the university, are working on storing a charge right in the fabric itself.

Li and his team took a brand new store bought plain white t-shirt and soaked it in a flouride solution. They then baked the t-shirt at a high temperature in an oxygen free oven. When the t-shirt was done baking the fibers in the shirt were converted from cellulose to activated carbon, capable of holding an electrical charge.

“We will soon see roll-up cell phones and laptop computers on the market,” Li said, according to Innovation News Daily. “But a flexible energy storage device is needed to make this possible.” The engineer notes that the activated carbon textile acts like a supercapacitor, because they can have “particularly high energy storage densities.”

The engineers also coated the shirt with a nanometer layer of manganese oxide which enhanced the shirts charge-ability.

The future is pointing to roll up cell phones, keyboards, and computers as well as flexible display devices. People are going to grow more and more tired of having to charge everything at home on a 110 outlet and stored batteries may soon one day fall to the wayside.

When it does, things like this t-shirt they are working on and even the possibility of furniture that just charges things in close proximity, will be the norm. We may not be too far off.

Source: Boy Genius Report

 

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