Credit: Huisheng Peng

Material scientists have created a wearable fabric that can gather solar energy from either side.

Huisheng Peng at Fudan University in Shanghai and his colleagues made the material (pictured) by sandwiching a textile, woven from metal fibres coated with a photoactive polymer, between two transparent and conductive carbon-nanotube sheets. The sandwich design means that the polymer solar cells can convert light to electricity regardless of whether they are illuminated from the top or bottom. This could make the fabric simpler to integrate into devices.

The cells convert just 1% of sunlight into electricity. But with efficiency improvements, the fabric could be used to power portable electronics, the authors say.

Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. http://doi.org/f2tqbp (2014)