On June 21, 2018 the international association IVAM Microtechnology Network hosted the MSTextiles Forum at the Fraunhofer IZM in Berlin/Germany. The subject was "Energy for Wearables". The forum examined the topics intelligent textiles, wearable sensor technology and wearables.
Ideas were described around an intelligent smart energy management. Only a combination of generation and storage technology together with a smart energy management has the potential to solve the problems of the energy supply for wearables. Wearables play an increasingly important role in daily life, e.g. in sports, the medical field for recording vital parameters and for use in active therapeutic units, but also to support production processes, aids in road traffic, etc. They consist of different micro- and nano-technical, optical and digital components.
The forum showed that battery technology is quiet advanced, even though the size and energy density is still under optimization. Especially wireless rechargeable batteries play an important role. There are also a lot of energy harvesting technologies under investigation. New small mobile fuel cells and a combination of solar energy generation with an organic battery were also presented.