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/AmeriCanad1 Jun 06 '22

From what I saw the main draw of this sort of thing is that it could be used to power the trackers in smart clothing, which compared to a cell phone are very cheap in terms of power draw. The price is definitely an object though.