This Designer Clothing Lets Users Turn On Electronics While Turning Away Bacteria

New rainproof, stainproof technology turns clothing into self-powered remotes

Purdue University researchers have developed a new fabric innovation that allows wearers to control electronic devices through clothing.

It is the first time there is a technique capable to transform any existing cloth item or textile into a self-powered e-textile containing sensors, music players or simple illumination displays using simple embroidery without the need for expensive fabrication processes requiring complex steps or expensive equipment.

The researchers proved that it is possible to fabricate textiles that can protect you from rain, stains, and bacteria while they harvest the energy of the user to power textile-based electronics.

These self-powered e-textiles also constitute an important advancement in the development of wearable machine-human interfaces, which now can be washed many times in a conventional washing machine without apparent degradation.

This waterproof, breathable and antibacterial self-powered clothing is based on omniphobic triboelectric nanogenerators (RF-TENGs) – which use simple embroidery and fluorinated molecules to embed small electronic components and turn a piece of clothing into a mechanism for powering devices.



The Purdue team says this technology is like having a wearable remote control that also keeps odors, rain, stains, and bacteria away from the user.

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