Washable, wearable battery-like devices could be woven directly into clothes

Researchers have developed washable, wearable 'batteries' based on cheap, safe and environmentally friendly inks and woven directly into fabrics. The devices could be used for flexible circuits, healthcare monitoring, energy conversion, and other applications. The team, led by Dr Felice Torrisi , who recently joined Imperial from the University of Cambridge, have shown how graphene - an atom-thick sheet of carbon - and other related materials can be directly incorporated into fabrics. Our inks are cheap, safe and environmentally friendly, and can be combined to create electronic circuits by simply overlaying different fabrics made of two-dimensional materials on the fabric. Dr Felice Torrisi Within the fabric, the materials produce charge storage elements such as capacitors, paving the way to textile-based power supplies which are washable, flexible and comfortable to wear. The research, published in the journal Nanoscale , demonstrates that graphene inks can be used in textiles able to store electrical charge and release it when required. The new textile electronic devices are based on low-cost, sustainable and scalable dyeing of polyester fabric.