Fabric power (Image: Image/Flickr/Getty)
FED up with your MP3 player running out of juice? Maybe your shirt could help. A newly developed carbon-nanotube-based ink that can soak into fabrics could turn clothing into wearable batteries.
and colleagues at Stanford University in California created the ink, made with single-walled carbon nanotubes. The team dyed porous fabrics with the ink to create a conductive textile with very low resistance. The fabric maintained performance after repeated washes, suggesting that the ink is durable (Nano Letters, ).
Cui says it’s possible to treat the dyed material with an electrolyte to create a fabric capacitor capable of…
