Consider this T-shirt: It can monitor your heart rate and breathing, analyze your sweat and even cool you off on a hot summer's day. What about a pillow that monitors your brain waves, or a solar-powered dress that can charge your ipod or MP4 player? Seems unreal? But this is not science fiction - this is cotton in 2010.
Now, the laboratory of Juan Hinestroza, assistant professor of Fibre Science and Apparel Design, has developed cotton threads that can conduct electric current just like a metal wire and yet remain light and comfortable enough to give a whole new meaning to multi-use garments. This technology works so well that simple knots in such specially treated thread can complete a circuit. Solar-powered dress with this technology literally woven into its fabric will soon be featured at the annual Cornell Design League Fashion Show.
Using multidisciplinary nanotechnology, the scientists developed a technique to permanently coat cotton fibres with electrically conductive nanoparticles. This way, sections of a traditional cotton fabric can be made to become conductive, achieving a myriad of applications.
The technology allows cotton to remain flexible, light and comfortable while being electronically conductive. Previous technologies have achieved conductivity but the resulting fibre becomes rigid and heavy. But this new technique makes the yarns friendly to further processing such as weaving, sewing and knitting, say the scientists.
This technology is beyond the theory stage. Hinestroza's student, Abbey Liebman, was inspired by the technology enough to design a dress that actually uses flexible solar cells to power small electronics from a USB charger located in the waist. The charger can power a smartphone or an MP3 player.
Here, instead of conventional wires, conductive cotton to transmit the electricity is used; so the conductive yarns become part of the dress.
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