Self-Powered Wearable Technology
For emerging wearable tech to advance, it needs improved power sources. Researchers from Michigan State University (MSU) have provided a potential solution via crumpled carbon nanotube (CNT) forests.
Changyong Cao, director of MSU’s Soft Machines and Electronics Laboratory, led a team of scientists that created highly stretchable supercapacitors for powering wearable electronics. The newly technology has demonstrated solid performance and stability, even when it is stretched to 800 percent of its original size over thousands of stretching/relaxing cycles.
The team’s creation may spur the development of new stretchable energy electronic systems and implantable biomedical devices, as well as smart packaging systems.
Many people will recognize wearable tech in its basic form as iWatches that communicate with smartphones. In that example, two pieces of technology need batteries. Now imagine burn victims wearing patches of “smart skin” that can monitor healing while powering themselves – that’s the future that Cao’s invention foresees.
NIFA supports the nanotechnology research through the Hatch Act Funds.
Read the article at MSU Today.
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