Ordinary cotton and polyester fabrics have been turned into batteries that retain their flexibility.
The demonstration is a boost to the
nascent field of "wearable electronics" in which devices are integrated
into clothing and textiles.
The approach is based on dipping fabrics in an "ink" of tiny tubes of
carbon, and was first demonstrated last year on plain copier paper.
The new application to fabrics is reported in the journal Nano Letters.
"Wearable electronics represent a developing new class of materials...
which allow for many applications and designs previously impossible
with traditional electronics technologies," the authors wrote.
A number of research efforts in recent years have shown the possibility
of electronics that can be built on flexible and even transparent
surfaces - leading to the often-touted "roll-up display".
However, the integration of electronics into textiles has presented
different challenges, in particular developing approaches that work
with ordinary fabrics.
Now, Yi Cui and his team at Stanford University in the US has shown
that their "ink" made of carbon nanotubes - cylinders of carbon just
billionths of a metre across - can serve as a dye that can simply and
cheaply turn a t-shirt into an "e-shirt".
Paper battery
The method was initially demonstrated using plain paper
The idea is the same as that outlined in their work with plain paper;
the interwoven fibres of fabrics, like those of paper, are particularly
suited to absorbing the nanotube ink, maintaining an electrical
connection across the whole area of a garment.
Cloth is simply dipped into a batch of nanotube dye, and is then pressed, to thin and even out the coating.
The fabric maintains its properties even as it is stretched or folded.
Even rinsing the samples in water and wringing them out does not change
their electronic properties.
"Our approach is easy and low-cost while producing great performance," Professor Cui told BBC News.
"Fabrics and paper
represent two technologies with a thousand-year-old history. We
combined 'high-tech' - nanotechnology - with traditional 'low-tech' to
produce new applications."
The next step is to integrate the
approach with materials that store more energy, in order to create more
useful batteries. By combining the approach with other electronic
materials in the ink, the team believes even wearable solar cells are
possible.