An international team has worked with ANFF experts at Deakin University to develop a method to fabricate large quantities of conductive fibres that could be used to produce energy storing textiles.

The researchers believe that their research, which demonstrates a new architecture of wearable energy storage devices called 3D knitted supercapacitors, could be used when creating flexible electronic devices, such as smart garments.

The international project saw scientists from Drexel University collaborate with Deakin researchers supported by the ARC Future Fellowship, ARC Research Hub for Future Fibres, and the Australian Academy of Science as they worked with ANFF engineers at the Institute for Frontier Materials (IFM).

ANFF’s equipment at the IFM was used to perfect the fabrication process, in particular melt extrusion and wet spinning was used to produce nylon fibre and MXene coated yarns, respectively. This resulted in scale up in production of between 10 and 100x over previous efforts.

Read the full story in Materials Today, or find the paper here.