Nanotechnology Review
The Review is a news and opinion service of the Center for Nanotechnology and Molecular Materials at Wake Forest University. The forum is open to the research community by sending your news or opinion pieces to the editor: carroldl@wfu.edu. The views and opinions expressed do not represent official positions of Wake Forest University.
This folding process leaves the mats at about the same thickness as regular felt. The bodies heat can easily produce millivolts and respectable powers, however there is much more that remains to be done. The next steps will be to take the traditional approach generally applied to improving normal thermoelectric materials, and apply them to this material.
While it is not expected to provide the kind of power necessary to power a computer or a iphone, Nanotech researchers do believe that it will eventually be able to supplement that power and thereby extend battery lifetime by 10% to 20% at a cost that is below $1/W. This means that it will eventually hit a technology price point that allows it to replace traditional fabrics in applications such as car seats.
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Welcome to the new Review. We are changing to an e-format. But our content will remain the same. more...
WFU Researchers develop PowerFelt. Imagine generating from the body’s heat. PowerFelt is a fabric that does just this. below...
Nanotech Briefs. Facility and faculty news from the Wake Forest University Nanotech Center. more...
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Nanotech Researchers in the News
Nanotech researchers to be featured on CNN as well as Discovery Channel. This past summer the announcement of Powerfelt - the fabric that generates power from the body’s heat, has made local news headlines all over NC and the web. From the Charlotte Observer to the website Gizmodo, Powerfelt has been a hit since the publication of the NanoLetters paper that describes how it works. However, this June films crews from international outlets started to show up. CNN and Discovery Channel spots were arranged by the WFU media relations office, who also coordinated the shot setup and demos with the production companies.
PowerFelt is a nonwoven fabric made from nanotubes that have been treated and embedded into a polymer matrix. While it has been known for sometime that such mats of nanotubes could produce a thermovoltage from the Seeback effect,
it is generally conceded that the power that one can obtain from such a material is too low to be useful.
However, Nanotech researchers found a way of overcoming this limitation by using a lesson from Origami. By folding the internal structure over and over - multiple layers of the ultra-thin mats can be made to add their powers together
The power-shirt: designed and tested by physics graduate student, Corey Hewitt, the shirt’s WF applique is made of PowerFelt. It is wired through the seams and actually produces power while you run!
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