A nanotech research team reveals its latest invention, which can make your clothes into a powerhouse. By the help of some nanowires embedded in your clothes, your outfit can generate enough power to light up your mp3 player or your cell phone or any other gadget, by just walking or dancing around.
Professor Zhong Lin Wang and team of the Georgia Institute of Technology coated Kevlar strands with zinc oxide nanowires, protecting the bushy wires with a polymer and adding gold to other fibers to act as a conductor. The piezoelectric power-generating action comes when the nanowires bend as two fibers rub together, translating bending of the material into electricity, which flows along the gold fibers.
Professor Wang says "across several square feet of fabric the nanowire fibers can generate power adding up to tens of Milliwatts, which is not a huge amount, but is certainly enough for a dribble top-up charge for your portable devices". Well the idea sounds perfect for medical and military use, but it is clearly an invention in its infancy as Wang notes, "What we've done is demonstrate the principle and the fundamental mechanism." The only flaw until now is that the nanowires are not wash proof and washing the clothes is not possible without damaging them.
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