Electric fabric claimed to zap germs, from masks down to underwear

A Japanese team has developed a fabric that can zap viruses and bacteria using tiny charges of electricity it generates.

People wearing face masks cross a street in Tokyo’s Shinjuku area. A Japanese team claims its ‘piezoelectric fabric’ can resist virus and bacteria. Picture: AFP

A Japanese team has developed a fabric that can zap viruses and bacteria using tiny charges of electricity generated by movement of the material itself, but it comes with no promises against the coronavirus.

The fabric, called Pieclex, harnesses the harmless electricity generated by the natural movement of a human body – like the static electricity that makes a person’s hair stand on end after taking off a sweater.

The “piezoelectric fabric”, which is derived from plants, could be used for sports clothes, underwear, nappies and sanitary products, as well as the kind of face mask worn to keep the coronavirus at bay.

The voltages generated are too weak to be felt by the person wearing the clothing, but according to researchers at the two companies involved in developing the fabric, they stop bacteria and viruses from multiplying inside the fabric.

“It has been effective on 99.9 per cent of bacteria and viruses we tested, working to curb their proliferation or inactivate them,” a spokeswoman for Murata Manufacturing, the electronics company that developed the fabric along with Teijin, told Agence France Presse.

Murata said that it hoped to get the material into shops early next year.

However, the makers said that they were experiencing difficulties obtaining samples of the coronavirus to test clothing. Strict rules apply to this and tests are carried out in authorised research institutes.

A spokesman for Teijin, a chemicals company, said that Pieclex was also good for the environment because its anti-germ qualities did not use chemical agents.

The Times