E-Textiles Network Webinar – E-Textile Power Supplies: Turning Fabrics into Batteries

Presented by Dr Sheng Yong University of Southampton

The research and development of e-textile and wearable electronics enable us to utilise electrical functionality in flexible devices. This has been demonstrated in many areas such as consumer electronics, healthcare and fitness monitoring. Such electrical functionality requires energy storage devices such as battery and supercapacitors to power the devices. At present, rigid batteries and supercapacitors are used to supply power in e-textile systems, but these energy storage devices make the e-textile inflexible and must be physically removed before the washing process. E-textile systems will benefit from integrated new light weight, wash proof, robust, and flexible energy storage devices. This webinar will introduce the types of energy storage devices and include a basic description of their operating principles and the material properties required to store energy. This webinar will also discuss the potential issues and challenges associated with realising flexible energy storage devices in textiles. Some examples of existing flexible energy storage devices in textile from the literature will be presented and the potential for these explored.

This webinar took place on Monday 31st January 2022 1.30pm (GMT).