Development of Self-powered Functional Textiles

The objective of project is to design, fabricate and evaluate an innovative kind of smart functional garments that can convert green, clean and renewable energies from human motion or wind energies into electrical energy for sustainable development. There is no such commercial product available in the market. The key challenges are to design a kind of self-powered garments whose energy conversion function can be activated by our ordinarily daily activities. To address these challenges, a new energy model will be designed and developed in this project. Based on the new mechanism, functional textile yarns and fabrics will be innovatively designed and developed for integration of novel energy materials. Then, fabrication methods and processing parameters ranging from yarn spinning, fabric making, pattern making to sewing and garment making will be designed and optimized in order for producing a prototype of self-powered garment with optimized performance. The successful completion of this project will have huge and broad commercialization potentials in the development of high-tech and smart products. It will not only bring a new high value-added opportunity and market to our local textile industry, but also make a significant contribution to the sustainable development of our community.