Hasta La Gadget!

A breakthrough in wearable computing lets researchers change ordinary cotton and polyester into electronic textiles that can double as rechargeable batteries. That means powering an iPod or cell phone could become as easy as plugging it into your tee shirt or jeans and charging the clothing overnight.

“Energy textiles will change the development of wearable electronics,” Liangbing Hu, one of the researchers from Stanford University involved in the project told Wired.com. “There are not that many solutions available for energy storage for wearable devices. Electronic textiles tries to solve that problem.”

Wearable electronics is an attempt to create a new category of devices that are flexible and lightweight such as wearable displays, embedded health monitors and textiles with electronics melded in.  In case of textiles, though, most attempts, so far, to integrate electronics involve patching sensors and resistors on to existing fabric.

The latest attempt tries to bring the electronics to the molecular level. The researchers coated cellulose and polyester fibers with ‘ink’ made from single-walled carbon nanotubes. The nanotubes are electrically conductive carbon fibers barely 1/50,000 the width of a human hair.

The process of dyeing with this special ink is similar to that used for dyeing fibers and fabrics in the textile industry, they say. Details of the method were published in a paper in the ACS’ Nano Letters journal.

The coating makes the fibers highly conductive by turning them into porous conductors. The treated textiles can then be used as electrodes and standard textiles used as separators to creates fully stretchable supercapacitors. Ordinary capacitors are used to store energy. Supercapacitors can offer turbocharge that principle such that the capacitor can be charged and discharged virtually an unlimited number of times.

“If you have a high surface area, you can store a high amount of charges,” says Hu. “Since we coat carbon nanotubes on textile fibers, it increases the surface and allows for charge and discharge cycles up to one million times,” says Hu.

The electronic textiles produced by this method retain the flexibility and stretchability of regular cotton and polyester. They also kept their electronic properties despite simulated repeated laundering, say the researchers.

The next step is to combine it with inks of other materials that could help turn the fabric into wearable solar cells and batteries.

The researchers are also looking to use graphene, a form of carbon derived from graphite oxide, instead of carbon nanotubes. “Graphene can be much cheaper than nanotubes,” says Hu, “so alternative materials like that could significantly reduce the cost of energy textiles.”

See Also:

• Flexible Displays Closer to Reality, Thanks to U.S. Army
• HP Prototypes First Flexible Display
• Corset Reacts to Carbon Dioxide Levels in the Air

Photo: E-ink treated fabrics could help charge electronics/ Stanford University

Boy, if it’s not car dashboards, it’s thermostats — you just can’t get away from touchscreens these days. The latest 7-inch temperature regulator from Silverpac comes with a bunch of extra goodies to entice the touch control-loving generation into the energy conservation game. With WiFi built in, the Silverstat 7 can pump data out to the internet or your home network, and is equally adept at streaming photos, music and other content back from those connections. A full week’s worth of water temperature instructions can be programmed into the device, which can also inform you of weather conditions and your home’s energy consumption. The latter part is most intriguing, as you’ll be informed of power usage on a per-appliance basis, which can be mighty beneficial when a certain bit of home hardware gorges on electricity without you knowing. June 2010 is set as the release date, but the wallet damage remains unrevealed.

Silverpac Silverstat 7 provides energy usage data, responds to touch originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 13 Jan 2010 04:38:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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[Thanks, Amanda; image courtesy of How To Draw]

Google launches Google Energy, hoping to bring more green energy to its datacenters originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 09 Jan 2010 09:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Continue reading Times Square New Year’s Eve ball drop brought to you by… some furiously pedaling tourists

Times Square New Year’s Eve ball drop brought to you by… some furiously pedaling tourists originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 30 Dec 2009 11:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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