Rechargeable Battery Fiber? Knit Yourself A Battery

A 140 Meter Long Fiber Battery

A team of researchers have come up with a way to create machine washable, flexible, usable underwater, fire and rupture-safe rechargeable battery fiber; even if they spelled it incorrectly.  The proof of concept was a 140m fiber battery with a discharge capacity of ∼123 mAh and discharge energy of ∼217 mWh, not enough to power an RTX 3090 but certainly a usable amount of energy for low powered electronics.

The obvious usage is for wearable electronics, as you could knit the fibre onto a piece of clothing and be able to power small electronic sensors, lights or other low power electronic devices.  That isn’t the only type of product it could be incorporated into as the rechargeable battery fiber could be included in the shell of a laptop to increase battery capacity without adding bulk or weight. 

Indeed the team incorporated their threads into a both flying and submarine drones to provide power, as well as a LiFi communication system, to send data via flashes of light.  Check out the abstract here.