Huisheng Peng’ s group
Huisheng Peng’ s group

The next big thing in electronic communications could be your favourite jacket

Embargoed until: Publicly released:
Peer-reviewed: This work was reviewed and scrutinised by relevant independent experts.

The next big thing in electronic communications could be your favourite jacket, according to Aussie and international researchers, who have developed flexible but durable electronic textile fabrics that can interact with your smartphone. The team developed the fabric using cotton mixed with conductive and luminescent fibres which can illuminate specific areas to build simple images and pictures, such as text messages or interactive maps for navigation. The fabric uses solar power to charge its batteries, and can be operated via a touch-sensitive fabric keyboard. The team say the fabric has been able to survive 100 cycles of washing and drying without losing brightness or experiencing performance issues, and they hope that it will shape the next generation of electronic communication tools, with applications for navigation and healthcare.

Journal/conference: Nature

Link to research (DOI): 10.1038/s41586-021-03295-8

Organisation/s: University of Technology Sydney (UTS)

Funder: This work was supported by MOST (2016YFA0203302), NSFC (21634003, 22075050, 21805044), STCSM (20JC1414902, 18QA1400700, 19QA1400800) and SHMEC (2017-01-07-00-07-E00062).

Media release

From: Springer Nature

An electronic textile with a large-area display that could have applications in communications, navigation and healthcare is described in Nature this week. The textile is flexible, breathable and durable, making it an ideal material for practical uses.

Creating large displays integrated with functional systems that are flexible and durable when worn has been challenging. Conventional solid-state display materials are not readily compatible with textiles because they struggle to withstand the natural deformation that occurs when fabrics are worn and washed. This new design weaves conductive fibres and luminescent fibres together with cotton into a fabric display, and is shown to overcome this issue.

Huisheng Peng and colleagues produced a display fabric that is 6 metres long and 25 centimetres wide that can be integrated with a touch-sensitive fabric keyboard and a fabric power supply (in this case, one that harvests solar energy). They demonstrate various applications for the fabric, such as a navigation tool that displays an interactive map or a communications tool that can send or retrieve messages via a Bluetooth connection with a smartphone. The display is produced by illuminating units (electroluminescent units) that form where the conductive fibres and luminescent fibres meet at contact points in the woven fabric. After 1,000 cycles of bending, stretching and pressing, the performance of the vast majority of electroluminescent units remained stable. In addition, the brightness of the electroluminescent units remained stable after 100 cycles of washing and drying. With the integration of more functionality, the authors expect these ‘smart textiles’ to shape the next generation of electronic communication tools.

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Multimedia:

  • Image 1
    Image 1

    A multicolor display textile exhibiting softness and stability under distortion.

    File size: 2.0 MB

    Attribution: Huisheng Peng’ s group penghs@fudan.edu.cn

    Permission category: Free to share (must credit)

    Last modified: 12 Mar 2021 12:07am

    NOTE: High resolution files can only be downloaded here by registered journalists who are logged in.

  • Image 2
    Image 2

    A 6 m × 25 cm large-area display textile containing approximately 5 × 105 electroluminescent units.

    File size: 868.9 KB

    Attribution: Huisheng Peng’ s group penghs@fudan.edu.cn

    Permission category: Free to share (must credit)

    Last modified: 12 Mar 2021 12:16am

    NOTE: High resolution files can only be downloaded here by registered journalists who are logged in.

  • Image 3
    Image 3

    Application scenarios for display textile as real-time location and message communication.

    File size: 819.2 KB

    Attribution: Huisheng Peng’ s group penghs@fudan.edu.cn

    Permission category: Free to share (must credit)

    Last modified: 12 Mar 2021 12:13am

    NOTE: High resolution files can only be downloaded here by registered journalists who are logged in.

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