Solar powered e-textile takes charging off the wall

The advanced prototype from a team at Nottingham Trent University could see devices charged via apparel and accessories instead of a wall socket.

“This material is a textile solar panel that has the properties of a normal textile,” said project lead Dr Theodore Hughes-Riley, associate professor of Electronic Textiles at the Nottingham School of Art & Design. “It can be deformed like a normal textile, it is breathable, and it is soft to the touch.”

The approximately 5mm by 1.5mm solar cells - which cannot be felt by the wearer - are soldered onto two copper wires and coated with a waterproof polymer before being incorporated into yarn that is woven using long-established weaving techniques into material, which measures 51cm by 27cm.

The silicon cells can harness 400mW of electrical energy from the sun, which can charge a basic mobile phone or smartwatch. Tests showed that the material generated a power output of 335.3mW in 0.86 sunlight. Under 1.0 sun it would generate up to 394mW.

The project team included Dr Neranga Abeywickrama, who worked as a postdoctoral research fellow in Energy Harvesting and Management in Textiles, and PhD candidate Matholo Kgatuke, research associate in the Weaving of Electronic Textiles.

In a statement, Ms Kgatuke, of the Nottingham School of Art & Design, said: “This project shows how e-textiles can be at the forefront of sustainability and that they have the potential to reshape our existing conceptions of technology.”

Dr Hughes-Riley added that the e-textile, which can be washed at 40^oC, will likely incorporate USB or micro-USB ports for devices and that next steps will see the team addressing production.

“The hope would eventually be to commercialise the technology, however before this is possible we will need to develop techniques to manufacture the electronic yarns at a larger scale in an automated fashion,” he said.