Design improvement of flexible textile aluminium-air battery

Abstract

Lately there have been a growing demand for energy sources that are suitable for powering smart textiles. A number of promising prototypes have been developed, many of which address important issues, but only to face new challenges. In this paper we propose a new approach to the development of energy source for smart textiles in order to overcome these challenges. The main feature of the new design is that the electrolyte is separated from the electrodes and is applied only when the cell needs to be activated. This makes shelf-life virtually infinite. We stress that this solution is suitable for specific applications only, outlined in the paper. The main aim of this study is to test viability of such an approach, using only textile materials. The presented electrical characteristics of the new battery should be assessed in this context. The main components of the battery include aluminium anode, air cathode and the shell made from cotton fabric. The paper focuses on the choice of textile-based materials for the anode and the cathode, since non-textile materials were used in these components in the original design. Besides that, the pure metal wire meshes have shown to be prone to oxidation. The new materials should address that issue as well. Electrical characteristics of the new design of the battery are measured, which confirm that there is no loss in battery performance. Next steps for further development of a multicell flexible textile battery, based on the results presented in this study, are outlined at the end of the paper.

Development of flexible textile aluminium-air battery prototype

“…Lately, a number of important studies have been published, which address just this problem. These studies focus on new materials and new approaches to powering smart textile; however, they will not be discussed here, since an extensive overview can be found in other papers [2,3,5,6,11].…”

“…In this paper, we focus in particular on a new approach to the development of energy source for smart textiles that is based on the idea of electrolyte and electrode separation [11]. This approach has a number of advantages, such as indefinite storage time and the possibility to use this battery as a self-energised wetness sensor [10].…”

“…The battery described in [11] is completely made from textile-based materials. Silver-coated permeable fabric is used as cathode current collector, which eliminates problems with oxidation, that the original copper current collector was prone to [10].…”

“…The main objective of this study is the development of a multi-cell battery, which is based on the improved cell design [11]. A single-cell is a flexible element of arbitrary shape, usually square, with two electrodes-an anode and a cathode.…”

“…More specifically, the original flexible aluminium-air battery was a combination of metal meshes and textile materials [10]. This design was later improved by replacing pure metal meshes with metal-coated textile materials [11], which ensured better flexibility and eliminated problems with copper mesh oxidation.…”