Piezoelectric charging for smart fabric applications

Our current research includes an innovative design and fabrication method for a wearable piezoelectric power generating fabric. Rather than building a flexible piezoelectric device and then applying it onto clothing as reported by other groups, our approach is to integrate the devices directly with the fabric while requiring no processing temperatures over 150°C. The device discussed here simply consists of a piezoelectric layer encapsulated between a bottom electrode/wearable fabric and a top layer electrode/conductive film layer.