Carbon nanotube yarns produce electricity when

stretched
www.iom3.org /materials-world-magazine/news/2017/oct/01/carbon-nanotube-yarns-produce-electricity-
when-stretched

Electricity-producing carbon nanotube yarns could have wide-ranging applications, from flexible
electronics to capturing energy from the ocean waves. But the technology and application are still in
their infancy. Khai Trung Le talks to Dr Carter Haines on its creation and immediate future.

Carbon nanotube yarns that can electrochemically convert tensile or torsional mechanical energy when
submerged in electrolyte and stretched or twisted could herald the proliferation of wearable electronics, or even
be used to harvest electricity from ocean waves.

The yarn, created by a joint team from Hanyang University, South Korea, and the University of Texas at Dallas,
USA, differs from normal capacitors by eliminating the need for external energy to add charges. Dr Carter
Haines, associate professor and co-author of the study, told Materials World, With a conventional electrostatic
capacitance harvester, you usually have to have external circuitry that applies charge and harvests the extra
energy. When stretched, the volume of the yarn decreases, squeezing the nanotubes together. This decreases
the electrochemical capacitance and generates current.

Referring to the yarn as twistron harvesters, Haines spoke of the principal advantage of the carbon nanotube
yarns eliminating the need for external voltage. The fact that you dont need to charge it was an unexpected
result. The yarn intrinsically charges itself when you dip it in electrolyte because of the difference in chemical
potential energy. The yarn ends up charged naturally all you need to do is dip it in electrolyte, stretch and the
power comes out.

Co-author Dr Shi Hyeong Kim also tested the yarn off the South Korean east coast surf, affixing a 10cm
harvester yarn between the seabed and balloon at the waters surface to demonstrate the suitability of ocean
water as an electrolyte. As waves arrived, the balloon would rise, stretching the yarn by up to 25% and
generating electricity.

The yarn is capable of generating 250W/kg under optimal conditions twisted 30 times a second while
submerged in hydrochloric acid. The team claim that no other reported harvester produces as much energy
output per cycle. However, conversion efficiency remains a significant problem. Haines said, The reason we get
such a high power output is because we can put a lot of mechanical energy into this particular structure. But the
actual conversion efficiency is quite low around the order of 1% mechanical to electrical.

The efficiency of the yarn is impacted by structure with uniform tension producing the greatest efficiency and
the joint team is also exploring different materials in a bid to move away from carbon nanotubes. 'It's very hard to
scale. If you want to make yarns beyond a few tens of microns in diameter, this works quite well if you have
access to this specific yarn-making technology. But if you want to scale and make very long lengths or wider
diameter yarns, this is not a very scalable, low-cost technology. We're looking at what other types of materials
we can use that will lower the production cost,' said Haines.

The Texas group has been using carbon nanotubes for several years, although its use in generating electricity is
a recent direction. Haines added, 'We first showed the inverse of this effect putting a material inside a yarn
and causing it to expand and, in doing so, making the yarn change lanes like an artificial muscle. So we were
making different artificial muscles based on coiled yarns and discovered they work fundamentally because of
yarn twist. After that, someone basically figured out you can take the yarn, stretch it, reverse the process and get
electricity out.'

With such ambitions as generating power from the ocean waves, improving efficiency and lowering cost remain
the Dallas/Hanyang teams priorities. Moving forward, we want to figure out technologies that are cheaper and
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scale better, and give us increased power output to the same mechanical energy, said Haines.

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