Personal Generator Suit - Charging Nanofibre Yarn

Dead phone or MP3 player batteries may soon be a thing of the past as there is now a personal generator suit to ensure your gadgets are always charged.

Nature.com reports that “Zhong Lin Wang and his colleagues at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta have made a yarn out of nanofibres that produce charge when they are rubbed against one another. Materials woven from these yarns could be used for self-powering clothes, shoes or biological implants such as pacemakers.”

The technology is based on the use of piezoelectric fibers, which produce a voltage when they are stretched, bent, or compressed.  It’s not quite ready for “prime-time” yet however.  So far the largest of the prototype yarns consisted of only a few fibers.