Can Graphene Be Used For Smart Clothing?

Since the physicist Andre Haim and Konstantin Novoselov won the Nobel prize in physics in 2010, graphene has become the world's attention.

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Ren Zhengfei has predicted that in the next 10 to 20, the epoch of graphene will subvert the silicon age.

Graphene is currently the thinnest, most intense, conductive and thermal conductive new nanomaterial, which is mainly used in fuel cells, flexible screens, automotive, aircraft and satellite manufacturing.

However, a company named Aika?

The field is intended to create smarter costumes.

At present, the application of graphene is divided into two types: heavy application and light application. Heavy application requires a lot of capital investment and long cycle development, so as to fundamentally replace the traditional materials with graphene monolayer atoms, such as graphene in the field of batteries and semiconductor chips, but this kind of application is limited by the current technology and output can not be rapidly popularized, and most of them are still in the laboratory stage.

The light application of graphene is for civilian applications, which can be quickly realized and can bring higher cost performance to consumers, such as graphene heating and filtration.

Aika AI family technology chose to apply graphene to the textile field, which attached importance to the good thermal conductivity of graphene. Chen Lijun, founder and CEO of Aika, told krypton 36 that the electrothermal conversion efficiency of graphene can reach 99%, which has absolute advantages compared with other materials. The traditional resistance wire heating is prone to short-circuit ignition, unsafe connection with water, and low human comfort.

And Aika loves home technology to embed graphene into the fiber structure. The twisting woven fabric can support 3.7V safe voltage, and can control the heating speed and temperature through APP, according to the situation.

As far as user experience is concerned, safety and comfort are improved.

Besides heating speed, its heating uniformity and heating efficiency are better than carbon fiber and resistance wire.

As a kind of graphene textile, its softness, no folding and washable properties are better.

There are two problems in doing so, the first is cost, the second is technology.

Although the price of graphene has dropped sharply in 2015, it is still a luxury item relative to other textile materials. If a wide range of applications are applied to clothing, the cost must be considered.

Chen Lijun told krypton 36, Aika love home technology research and development, 1 grams of graphene can be woven into 2630 square meters.

In this way, the cost of such sharing is negligible.

In terms of technology, Aika love home technology and University of Manchester graphene Research Institute, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Changzhou Advanced Materials Research Institute, new materials and industrial technology Beijing Research Institute and other top institutions, and obtained more than 10 patents.

However, how to make graphene clothing smart? Chen Li Jun said that only a special group of people need to wear equipment, such as the elderly, outdoor special jobs.

He believes that the future smart clothing entry point is "fever", the essence of clothing is to keep out the cold, which is hard and rigid demand.

In addition to the deep integration of graphene and textiles, Aika love home technology has independently developed graphene textile sensors, which can be directly attached to cloth, combined with smart wearable, can collect and excavate human data, and carry out health management and intelligent services through the data.

By the end of 2015, a self-developed "graphene smart shawl with heating function" was developed by Aika AI family. It landed at the Jingdong public chip and ended up with 5 million 190 thousand of the amount. Nearly 6000 people took part in the activity.

This shawl is graphene as a heating carrier, temperature controlled by APP, 5V safe voltage supply, easy to use, safe and controllable.

Aika AI family technology won the Pre-A round financing of Anxin securities and Bauhinia Angel 10 million yuan in 2015. For the next step, Aika plans to quickly pform the technology through graphene material modification, intelligent acquisition, big data and so on.

Since the production of graphene garments is very demanding for garment enterprises, Chen Li Jun predicts it will take five years to really turn the technology into the civil heating clothing industry.

Nowadays, the environment of graphene industry is hot and impetuous, and the concept is mostly speculation.

Last year, graphene industry shares surged, and this year, the market overcame.

This shows us a serious lack of downstream applications, and there is still much room for industrialization.

Although graphene is used to make the fabric feel like a mosquito, it is a new application for graphene under the premise of other heavy applications.