In the new sci-fi movie Dune: Part Two, most everyone traveling into the desert of the planet Arrakis wears a stillsuit. It uses energy from the motion of its wearer to distill sweat into water. But in real life, many wearable electronics, such as smartwatches, require silicon-based microprocessors, wires, and batteries to function. Clothing embedded with such components is stiff, uncomfortable, and reliant on a battery or another power source.
A newly developed electronic fiber could overcome many of those obstacles. Designed by Qinghong Zhang, Chengyi Hou, and Hongzhi Wang of Donghua University in Shanghai, China, and their colleagues, the fiber is flexible enough to be comfortably woven into clothing and other textiles, and it doesn’t require an external power source or any computer chips. Instead, it stores and disperses energy that it draws with the help of the human body.
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