Wearable Integrated Devices for Sustainable Energy: Self Powered e-Cloths

Nowadays, from lifestyle to sports and health to security, wearable technology is an inevitable trend that, through the human-machine interaction, has the capability of transforming businesses by making them smarter, more informative, and more communicative. In this study, commercial textile fibers have been functionalized with Polypyrrole (PPy) to achieve an electronic system that can convert external mechanical energy into electrical energy. PPy is a biocompatible π-conjugated polymer. The main principle behind the devices’ operation is the charge transfer mechanism that occurs between the π-conjugated polymer and the metal (electrode) layer when the system suffers mechanical stress. Furthermore, the PPy functionalized textile has been weaved to an e-cloth, through a custom-built weaving machine. This e-cloth can generate current under human-motion interaction. The best results achieved in this study, in terms of power density and current density, were 2.29 Wm-2 and 23.9 mA m-2 , respectively. Considering the best device, we were able to light up to 50 LEDs connected in series. With this device, we were also able to charge a 33F capacitor up to 1V, in 225 seconds. All the devices built have kept electrical stability during the six months of the work. The main application explored in this study was the detection of human movements through motion interactive energy harvesting technology.