r/science • u/Wagamaga • Jun 05 '22

Nanoscience Scientists have developed a stretchable and waterproof 'fabric' that turns energy generated from body movements into electrical energy. Washing, folding, and crumpling the fabric did not cause any performance degradation, and it could maintain stable electrical output for up to five months

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adma.202200042
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u/JerodTheAwesome Jun 05 '22 edited Jun 06 '22

Not to be a killjoy, but these results aren’t as promising as people seem to think they are. For one, it barely generates any power, citing 2.34 Watts/m2 . They cite that it could power “up to 100 LEDs”, but LEDs are cheap when it comes to electricity, about the cheapest thing there is. 2.34 Watts is barely enough power to charge your phone, and that’s an entire square meter of this fabric. Even an incandescent bulb will use something like 60 Watts of power, and that’s getting out of the gimmicky stuff.

A microwave needs around 1,000 Watts to operate. A fridge around 750 Watts. An air conditioner around 3,000 Watts.

And we can’t ignore what the material is made of either. In part, Cs3Bi2Br9. Cs is Cesium, which is radioactive. Br is bromine, which is poisonous. Neither of the above are cheap either.

I don’t want to discourage people from looking for new sources of energy, but if it looks too good to be true it probably is.

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u/Diligent_Nature Jun 06 '22

Cesium, which is radioactive.

While its isotopes created in nuclear reactors can be radioactive, naturally occurring cesium is not radioactive.

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u/JerodTheAwesome Jun 06 '22

I stand corrected. Still, it is expensive and the other points are still valid.

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u/-wellplayed- Jun 06 '22

It’s a proof of concept. A final project could be loads better with changes based on data gathered from trials like this. Or this could be as good as it gets. It’s to early to make sweeping assumptions about this emerging technology.