A Wearable Battery Cloth

Hydrated ruthenium oxide has demonstrated outstanding volumetric charge storage capability. It is non-toxic, environmentally safe, and when used with an oxidizing counter-electrode, becomes part of a galvanic cell (a battery). Ruthenium oxide and many oxidizing metals, like zinc, are available as nano-particulate powers. They combine to form highly flexible batteries with excellent current sourcing capabilities. We have built a thin film battery with the highest reported current density of any thin film cell. The major barrier to acceptance of this material system is cost. In the past, 1 m2 of the battery material could cost one hundred thousand dollars. We propose a manufacturing technique that can lower costs to less than one hundred dollars per m2. It is based on a coating approach that forms continuous layers of nano-particles whose thickness is close to that of a single nano-particle diameter. Thin, coated sheets can be pulled through the coater at a rate of meters squared a minute. The resulting sheets are easily assembled into mechanically flexible batteries or capacitors. The goal of the proposed program is to create a wearable battery cloth capable of powering first responder gear for times much longer than that of a typical responder mission.