qCella

“Fabric that’s a heater? You bet!”

Copper impregnation: How ETH doctoral student Murielle Schreck wants to revolutionize the market for heated clothing.

Your website https://qcella.com talks about the next generation of heating fabrics. You’ll have to explain this in more detail.

We don’t heat the fabric; we turn the fabric into a heater. This is the result of years of research at the Department of Materials at ETH Zurich. In essence, we are impregnating fabric fibers with copper particles. When a fabric made of these fibers is connected to a battery, it heats evenly up to 65°C.

You will be completing your doctorate in this field shortly. What’s the next step?

I often asked myself that during my doctoral research and decided that I wanted to create something myself. That’s why I attended the Business Concept course. Now I will apply for grants and fellowships that will allow me to pursue the qCella project. So far, we can only produce small areas of heatable fabric using our method. The next step is to scale up the manufacturing process.

Traditionally, the textile industry is not very innovative…

Here, I have to disagree with you. I am in contact with three established companies who are very interested. It certainly helped that I did a lot of research before the initial meetings, trying to understand what they were already working on and where I could add value.