Transforming Clothes Into New Development Of Battery Intelligent Textile And Garment Industry

The joint team of Nanyang Technology University in Singapore (NTU), Tsinghua University in China and Case Western Reserve University in the United States has developed a flexible micro super capacitor like fiber, which can be woven into clothing as a source of wearable medical monitoring, communication equipment or other small electronic products, and has taken a big step in developing new energy storage devices.

The research results have been published in "natural nanotechnology".

This new device is a super capacitor, like the "cousin" in the battery family.

Its graphene and carbon nanotube interconnect is very compact, and its storage energy has more advantages than some thin film lithium batteries.

The device has the advantages of maintaining charging and releasing energy much faster than the battery.

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The structure of the hybrid material provides a large accessible surface area and is highly conductive.

Researchers believe that this volume of storage capacity, known as volume energy density, is the highest value of carbon based micro supercapacitors so far: 6.3 microwatts per cubic millimeter.

The fiber can also be woven in a crisscross way.

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Product wearable devices.

For example, such clothing can provide electricity for patients who carry biomedical monitoring devices at home, and can provide information to doctors in hospitals.

A super capacitor like a battery can provide power for monitors or communications pistors.

The researchers say the fiber may be a space saving power source, as an energy delivery conductor for medical implants, which can be used to supply medical devices to patients or elderly people at home, or to provide power for soldiers to use communication devices in the wild.

In addition, researchers have been interested in testing the multifunctional applications of these fibers, including batteries, solar cells, biofuels, and flexible, wearable photoelectric systems sensors.

"We have opened up many possibilities and there are still many things to do in the future," the researchers said.

The specific method is to design mixed fibers to increase volume energy density, contain oxidized acid monolayer carbon nanotubes, graphene oxide and ethylenediamine two, to promote synthesis and nitrogen coating to graphene, through flexible narrow enhancement tube, namely capillary column pumping, heating in oven for 6 hours.

In graphene sheets, only a few thick carbon nanotubes, which are thick enough to be arranged in one line, are self assembled into porous networks with fiber length.

This arrangement provides a large number of accessible surface areas, each gram of hybrid fiber up to 396 square meters, for the pport and storage of charges.

These materials are tightly packed in capillary columns so that they can be extracted to form high volume energy density.

The process of using multiple capillary columns can make the fibers continuously and consistently maintain quality.

It is reported that researchers have developed a continuous production of this elastic fiber way, so that it can expand production to meet various applications.

So far, 50 meter long fibers have been produced, with flexibility and 300 Fala per cubic centimeter.

In the tests, the researchers found that three pairs of fibers arranged in series had a voltage of three times and maintained the same charge / discharge time.

Compared with single fiber operated at the same current density, three pairs of parallel fibers are three times more effective in terms of output current and charging / discharging time.

When they integrate multiple pairs of fibers between two electrodes, their ability to store electrical energy, i.e. capacitance, can be linearly increased according to the number of fibers used.

Using polyvinyl alcohol / phosphoric acid gel as electrolyte, solid state micro supercapacitors can be produced by a pair of optical fibers, providing a volume density of 6.3 microwatts per cubic millimeter, comparable to 4 volt 500 microhour lithium battery.

Fiber supercapacitors exhibit super high energy density while maintaining high power density and cycle stability.

The researchers said: "we tested the charging / discharging cycle of this fiber optic device tens of thousands of times, retaining the original performance of about 93%, while the traditional rechargeable battery life is less than 1000 cycles."

The team also tested the flexible energy storage of the device and kept constant mechanical stress on it. Finally, its performance was evaluated: fiber super capacitors operate continuously without loss of performance, even after hundreds of times of bending, they can remain flexible and keep the same length in structure.

At present, researchers are reducing the cost to mass produce this fiber, aiming at promoting the commercialization of this kind of high-performance micro super capacitor.