Successful Development Of Folding Washable Smart Fabric

Scientists at the Federal Institute of technology in Zurich, Switzerland, have developed a new technology that can spin sensors, conductive fibers and other electronic components into fibers.

This fabric is made of ordinary fabric and electronic components.

All along, scientists have tried to add electronic components in ordinary cloth to make them have specific functions. The most common solution is to fix electronic components on cloth by sewing.

The obvious drawback of the "electronic garment" made by this method is that it can not be washed directly.

In addition, the production can only be carried out by manual operation, which is not convenient for large-scale commercial production, resulting in high cost of such clothing.

The technology developed by scientists at the wearable computer laboratory at the Federal Institute of technology in Zurich is to attach a plastic fiber to a miniaturized electronic component and connect a large number of micro integrated circuits through a special material and structure.

Although the textile material contains a large number of electronic components, the smart fabric is not much different from the ordinary fabric in appearance. The clothes made of it can also be folded easily, which means that the smart clothing will not be strange even in daily life.

In addition, because the electronic components in the fabric are all encapsulated by plastic, the clothes made of them can also be washed conveniently.

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At present, the fabric made of this technology is mainly banded, but researchers hope that the final smart fabric can withstand arbitrary tailoring, so as to better meet the needs of clothing design and production.

Through this technology, researchers have produced two samples: tablecloths that display the ambient temperature and humidity through the LED (LED), and vests that can measure body temperature at any time.

Kunigunde Chicnik, the head of the project, said that smart fabric technology will have a very wide application prospect in the future: the mixed fabric with heart rate monitoring sensors can help injured athletes safely carry out rehabilitation training, provide information for the wounded or the environment for the first aid and firemen, and even integrate the monitors and keyboards on the clothes so that we can easily "wear" the computer.

Next, they will focus on solving the power supply problem of smart fabrics, and plan to further expand the space of smart fabrics to support larger sensor and bus structures.