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Tuesday, August 27, 2019

Coming Soon: Smart Textiles




Laser printed wearable smart fabrics have a range of potential applications from monitoring vital signs of patients, to tracking the location and health status of soldiers, and monitoring pilots or drivers for fatigue.

Dr. Litty Thekkakara, a researcher in RMIT's School of Science in Melbourne, Australia, said smart textiles with built-in sensing, wireless communication or health monitoring technology called for robust and reliable energy solutions.

"Current approaches to smart textile energy storage, like stitching batteries into garments or using e-fibres, can be cumbersome and heavy, and can also have capacity issues," Thekkakara said.

Thekkakara and a team from RMIT University have developed a cost-efficient and scaleable method for rapidly fabricating textiles that are embedded with energy storage devices.

In just three minutes, the method can produce a 10x10cm smart textile patch that's waterproof, stretchable and readily integrated with energy harvesting technologies.

The technology enables graphene supercapacitors -- powerful and long-lasting energy storage devices that are easily combined with solar or other sources of power -- to be laser printed directly onto textiles.

Read more here.


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