They invent solar cells in textiles that provide a source of energy.

Fashion in clothes is part of our life, the elements we wear to look our best and also to keep warm or feel good, but the production of this type of textile elements accounts for 4% of all global carbon emissions.

Fortunately, now researchers in the field of design and physics in Finnish Aalto University are working to bring this vision to life with their Sun-powered Textiles project, a method of attaching invisible solar cells to textiles that can power wearable devices such as humidity or temperature sensors.

This would allow designers create clothes using solar energy without changing the aesthetics of clothes. To achieve this, the researchers laminated the solar cell component between textiles in a waterproof polyurethane film so that the component was machine washable.

They then washed the textiles containing the solar cell component. dozens of times at 40°C and measured the power of the solar cells after each washing cycle in the washing machine..

As a result showed that five out of eight samples retained their effectiveness while three lost about 20% of their activity, but fortunately none of the cells were damaged in the process.

For their study, the researchers used commercial single-crystal silicon solar cells that can detect light invisible to the naked eye. The solar panel was designed to be very thin and flexible, covered with a layer of fabric.

The material used was made from a single fiber and could be recycled as efficiently as possible, while the electronic components could be removed from the fabric simply by heating and tearing them off.

As such, the research team believes that workwear is the most potential application for solar-powered textiles, given that they are thicker than regular clothing, so checks have limited impact on the look of workwear.