Nylon is a plastic material from the polyamide family that is used in all kinds of day-to-day accessories, like stockings, sports apparel and even certain toothbrushes. — lnzyx/IStock.com/AFP
Could it be possible to charge your cell phone from your clothes and your body movement? That's an idea that several engineers in Europe have been working on. Now, they've found a way of making nylon-based textile fibres that can produce electricity in this way. Nylon is a plastic material from the polyamide family that is used in all kinds of day-to-day accessories, like stockings, sports apparel and even certain toothbrushes.
The study, from the UK's University of Bath, in collaboration with the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Germany and the University of Coimbra in Portugal, is based on the idea of piezoelectricity, the phenomenon in which mechanical energy is transformed into electric energy by movement. So, if you wear stockings, for example, simply swinging your legs could create enough distortions in the fibres to generate electricity.
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