title: Wearable textile battery rechargeable by solar energy.
abstract: Wearable electronics represent a significant paradigm shift in consumer electronics since they eliminate the necessity for separate carriage of devices. In particular, integration of flexible electronic devices with clothes, glasses, watches, and skin will bring new opportunities beyond what can be imagined by current inflexible counterparts. Although considerable progresses have been seen for wearable electronics, lithium rechargeable batteries, the power sources of the devices, do not keep pace with such progresses due to tenuous mechanical stabilities, causing them to remain as the limiting elements in the entire technology. Herein, we revisit the key components of the battery (current collector, binder, and separator) and replace them with the materials that support robust mechanical endurance of the battery. The final full-cells in the forms of clothes and watchstraps exhibited comparable electrochemical performance to those of conventional metal foil-based cells even under severe folding-unfolding motions simulating actual wearing conditions. Furthermore, the wearable textile battery was integrated with flexible and lightweight solar cells on the battery pouch to enable convenient solar-charging capabilities.
authors.affiliation: Graduate School of EEWS, ‡Department of Mechanical Engineering, §Department of Materials Science and Engineering and ∥KAIST Institute NanoCentury, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) , Daejeon 305-701, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Yong-Hee
authors.initials: YH
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.forename: Joo-Seong
authors.initials: JS
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.forename: Jonghyeon
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Noh
authors.forename: Inhwa
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.forename: Hyeong Jun
authors.initials: HJ
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.forename: Sunghun
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Choi
authors.forename: Jeongmin
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Seo
authors.forename: Seokwoo
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Jeon
authors.forename: Taek-Soo
authors.initials: TS
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.forename: Jung-Yong
authors.initials: JY
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.forename: Jang Wook
authors.initials: JW
authors.lastname: Choi
mesh_terms: D003020:Clothing; D011211:Electric Power Supplies; D006801:Humans; D036103:Nanotechnology; D012993:Solar Energy; D013784:Textiles