The Power of Fashion
The expression “turn off your clothes” might soon be applied more literally than it once was for the geeky guy wearing the bright yellow Hawaiian shirt. MIT Technology Review recently reported on a technology that might some day extract power from the clothes we wear. It’s all part of a new movement to harvest energy from the various sources of kinetic energy that surround us.
Georgia Tech materials science professor Zhong Lin Wang and his team have adapted their zinc oxide nanowire technology to a new way to generate power. They have grown the nanowires on top of a polymer surface a bit like hair. The flexing and movement of the hairs can generate electricity from the movement or even the breath or heartbeat of the person donning the new fabric. According the the MIT report, as much as 80mW are available per square metre of the fabric. The energy conversion ability of the nanowires has been known for some time, but their use in clothing is a new development.
One other source of power that has attracted the interest of the US military generates power from the motion of a person walking. Simon Fraser University professor, Max Donelan, is the lead researcher for this presently untapped source of portable power. For a 21st centruy soldier in the field, a few extra minutes of battery life in a GPS receiver might actually save his life.
The zinc oxide nanopartilce clothes and the SFU Biomechanical Energy Harvester represent the larger-scale devices within the broader field of environmental energy harvesters. I have previously posted (see “More Buzz” and “Nanotechnology from Gigatools”) about nanogeneration of power, and I believe this will be the enabling technology for a wide range of devices from wireless sensor networks to self-powering drug delivery robots and diagnostic devices inside our bodies.
In a somewhat related development, researchers are proposing self-cleaning clothes that harness the power of the sun to do the dirty work. The secret is in the titanium dioxide coats the textile fibers. According to this work, the titanium oxide spontaneously combusts, vaporizing the stain on top of it. Perhaps future developments will allow some of the heat of that combustion to be recycled so that the sloppiest among us will be able to get the best charge out of our clothes.
With the global energy crisis, it would certainly be amazing to see each of us able to produce a small amount of energy for ourselves. Imagine being able to charge your iPod or phone simply by walking. The more you walk, the more charge you’ll make. With that comes body heat. If that could be harnessed as well then we truly are looking at turning each and every individual into energy generation factories.
Ok, so maybe it’s a little far fetched at the moment, but if these technologies take off and come into mainstream production, this is what the future could look like. Exciting times are ahead!