Yarn-like Rechargeable Zinc Battery Could Power Smart Clothes and Wearables
The zinc yarn battery works when knotted, stretched, cut, and washed, Via spectrum.ieee
Researchers have shaped a rechargeable zinc-ion battery into an elastic yarn that churns out power when bent, stretched, washed with water, and even cut.
The zinc yarn battery could be woven into washable sensor-laden smart clothes and integrated into commercial textiles to power wearable displays, electronics, and medical implants.
The yarn joins a line-up of innovative flexible energy-generating and -storing devices that can be integrated into power fabrics. The list includes solar cell ribbons that can be woven into fabrics, knittable supercapacitors, and power-generating yarns that harvest mechanical energy or the triboelectric effect to generate power.
Some researchers have tried to make flexible versions of the workhorse zinc-manganese alkaline battery because of its proven high capacity, low cost, and safety. But these flexible versions have had low capacities. Plus these primary batteries can’t be recharged. But researchers have recently come up with high-performance rechargeable zinc-ion batteries.
Chunyi Zhi of the City University of Hong Kong and his colleagues made their thread-like rechargeable zinc battery by twisting carbon nanotube fibers into yarn. They coat one piece of yarn with zinc to make an anode and another with manganese dioxide to serve as a cathode. Then they wind the two yarn pieces on an elastic fiber, soak it with a commonly used water-absorbing gel, and encase the device in elastic silicone and a water repellant.
The yarn battery, detailed in ACS Nano, has a energy density of 53.8 milliwatt-hours per cubic centimeter, which is around three times as much as commercial thin-film lithium-ion batteries. It retains over 98 percent of its capacity after 500 recharging cycles.
Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat and our Discord!
Python for Microcontrollers – Adafruit Daily — Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: New Python Releases, an ESP32+MicroPython IDE and Much More! #CircuitPython #Python #micropython @ThePSF @Raspberry_Pi
EYE on NPI – Adafruit Daily — EYE on NPI Maxim’s Himalaya uSLIC Step-Down Power Module #EyeOnNPI @maximintegrated @digikey
