In a recent study, scientists have developed innovative solar-powered clothing by combining a flexible solar cell with an electrocaloric device.
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This groundbreaking technology enables the clothing to dynamically adjust to fluctuations in ambient temperature, ensuring the body's safety and comfort. The application of this device extends beyond everyday scenarios, with potential benefits in extreme environments such as outer space or other planets.
While traditional clothing typically focuses on warming or cooling individuals, adapting to rapidly changing environmental temperatures remains a challenge, especially in harsh conditions like polar regions, deserts, or space.
Existing thermoregulatory clothing technologies fall into two categories: passive systems, which include radiative cooling and phase change methods, and active systems that allow rapid warming or cooling but often demand significant power and complex equipment.
The researchers, led by Ziyuan Wang, introduce an all-day solar-powered bidirectional thermoregulatory clothing system.
This system effectively responds to complex and quick environmental temperature changes, integrating an organic photovoltaic module with a bidirectional electrocaloric unit into a flexible, self-powered device that can be seamlessly integrated into conventional clothing. The device requires no additional power sources as it is fueled by sunlight.
According to the study, Wang et al.'s clothing system can provide 10.1 Kelvin (K) of cooling during hot days and maintain the body at 3.2 K warmer than bare skin in the dark or at night. The device ensures that human skin temperature remains within the thermal comfort zone of 32.0 °C to 36.0 °C, even as the environmental temperature fluctuates between 12.5 °C and 37.6 °C. Notably, the high efficiency of the device allows for 24 hours of controllable thermoregulation with just 12 hours of sunlight energy input.
“The integrated device of Wang et al. opens many possibilities for developing actively controlled, self-powered and wearable localized thermal-management systems and expanding human adaptation to harsh environments,” write Xingyi Huang and Pengli Li in a related Perspective.
They add, “It is possible to imagine a future of all-weather thermal management that is not limited by an energy supply and where extra collected energy might even power electronic devices under special conditions.”
Journal Reference:
Wang, Z., et al. (2023) Self-sustaining personal all-day thermoregulatory clothing using only sunlight. Science. doi.org/10.1126/science.adj3654.
Source: https://www.aaas.org/