Highly flexible, breathable, tailorable and washable power generation fabrics for wearable electronics

Abstract

Wearable energy supply devices are indispensable corner stone for emerging wearable electronics. Current energy supply devices are based on materials that are rigid, bulky and heavy, making them difficult to wear. Here, we introduce advances to the scalable fabrication of flexible and breathable power generation fabrics with satisfactory tailorable and washable properties. The fabricated fabrics can harvest versatile biomechanical energy from human motions and convert them effectively into steady electricity. With an effective area of 16 cm2, this textile could deliver a power density of 80 mW/m2 at a load of 50 MΩ. The design has been proven to be a promising and reliable strategy to sustainably drive wearable electronics in a clean, safe and efficient manner. Besides the function of energy harvesting, these smart fabrics can also be integrated with daily-wearing clothes to sense the amplitude of human motions, serving as a highly sensitive sensor of human movements and postures. All these merits of the power generation fabrics are promising to widely benefit the development of smart textiles and next-generation wearable electronics.