An Electricity-Generating Nanofiber Is Being Developed In Japan; Could Find Its Way Into Clothing
The development of new technology never takes a day off. Even when we, as consumers, don’t know that things are happening, things are indeed happening behind the scenes. For instance, if we get jackets that can charge our phones several years from now, the necessary materials are being developed right now.
Here’s a quick science lesson: it’s possible to generate electricity using a difference in temperature, and this is called the Seebeck effect. Think about a digital thermometer; it doesn’t have any liquid that expands or contracts with temperature increases. Instead, it uses this effect, and the magnitude of the change in voltage is used to determine the temperature. This isn’t a new physical phenomenon, but the problem is it just doesn’t provide enough electricity to be useful for much.
Well, here’s where things get exciting. The development of an eight-nanometer-thick carbon fiber nanotube in Japan has made it possible to harness a heat difference to an extent that is actually usable. You’ll get 242 microwatts of power generated per meter of material and temperature difference (in degrees Kelvin) squared.
Theoretically, this would best be applied in clothing, and since one of these nanotubes is about 1/10,000 the thickness of a human hair, you’d barely notice them. The colder it is on the outside and the warmer it is on the inside of your clothing, the more power is capable of being generated.
Charging Your Mobile Devices On The Go Could Become More Convenient Than Ever, At Some Point
Now, one of the biggest challenges would be the need for a large length of fiber in contact with your body to be able to generate a significant amount of power. To get one watt of power with a 10 Kelvin difference (about an 18-degree Fahrenheit difference), you’d need 160 feet of the fiber. One watt isn’t enough to charge anything and five watts is the bare minimum (in a world with 100W+ charging). This means this fiber might be best applied to shirts, sweaters, jackets, pants, and coats. Essentially larger articles of clothing with a lot of material.
Of course, this clothing will have to have a part containing the hardware that “gathers” the power, potentially stores it, and then a physical cable that you can use. That part might make this more suited for bulky clothing like jeans or a jacket (and not a T-shirt). But why stop with wired charging? You could even have a pocket with a wireless charging pad in it, to make things even more convenient.
Again, I’m just speculating the direction that things could go in, but it’s nice to have a development such as this one in the works. Because no matter how compact chargers can get, nothing would beat having a built-in charger.
