China Science and Technology Network reported on June 2 (Zhang Wei compiled) Imagine a piece of clothing that keeps your body at a comfortable temperature, whether it is actually cold or hot. This is the goal of a project at the University of California, San Diego, which received $2.6 million in funding from the US Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency. Putting on this smart clothing can reduce the heating and air conditioning costs of buildings and homes.
The project, titled ATTACH (Independent Cooling and Heating Adaptive Textile Technology), was conducted under the leadership of Joseph Wang, Distinguished Professor of Nano Engineering at the University of California, San Diego.
By adjusting the temperature of a person nearby rather than the entire house, smart clothing can at least cut 15% of building and home energy consumption, Wang points out.
"When only one or two people are in a big house, it is not cost-effective to heat or cool the entire room," Wang said. “If you can do local heating or cooling, it's like you are in the car, just heating the car seat instead of raising the temperature inside the car, you can save a lot of energy.â€
Smart clothing is designed to adjust the wearer's somatosensory temperature by adapting to changes in temperature in the room, keeping the temperature at 93 ° F. When the room temperature gets cold, the clothing becomes thicker. When the room temperature rises, the garment will become thinner. To accomplish this extraordinary performance, researchers will insert cold-shrinking polymers into smart clothing.
“Whether the surrounding temperature rises or falls, the user does not need to adjust the thermostat and will always feel like a spring breeze,†Wang said.
“93° F is a comfortable skin temperature for most people,†added Renkun Chen, an assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of California, San Diego, and a collaborator on the project.
Chen's contribution to the project was the development of an auxiliary device called cooling and heating for thermoelectric materials that was printable and could be implanted in specific locations on smart clothing. Thermoelectric materials can regulate "hot spots" such as the temperature of the back and soles of the feet. When a person is active, the temperature of these parts is higher than other parts of the body.
“It's like a personalized air conditioner or heater,†says Chen.
“With the advent of smart clothing, you don’t need to make the room as hot as it is in the winter, and cool the room temperature in the summer as cool as winter. Smart clothing means lower energy consumption. And, regardless of the temperature difference How big, you will still feel comfortable," Chen said.
The researchers also designed smart clothing that is self-powered. This garment includes a rechargeable battery that can energize thermoelectric materials, and a biofuel cell that can draw power from human sweat. In addition, all accessories—batteries, thermoelectric materials, and bio-batteries—can be printed using printable wearable device technology developed in Wang's lab. These accessories are also very thin, flexible and flexible, ensuring that smart clothing is not cumbersome.
“Our goal is to create smart garments that look and feel the same as people's everyday clothes. It can be washed, stretched, bent, and light weight. We also want smart clothes to be more attractive and more stylish,†Wang said.
In terms of price, the research team has not yet determined the cost of smart clothing. It depends on the scale of production, but the printing technology of Wang Labs can produce parts at low cost. Lowering costs is a major goal, the researchers said.
Waterproof Dustproof Scanner,Dustproof Scanner,Waterproof Scanner,Waterproof Dustproof Scanners
Guangzhou Winson Information Technology Co., Ltd. , https://www.barcodescanner-2d.com