New Material: Electroluminescent Fiber Achievements Change People And Environment

Wearing clothes made of light-emitting fibers, traditional light-emitting fibers are always inseparable from chips and batteries, which makes the corresponding textile products larger and heavier, and it is difficult to make them soft and light.

Recently, the research team of Donghua University published an interesting paper in Science. They have developed a new type of smart fiber that integrates wireless energy collection, information perception and transmission. This "black technology" fiber can gather the electromagnetic energy dissipated in the atmosphere and generate electrical signals. It does not need additional power supply, and only needs the human body to touch it gently to glow.

Compared with traditional rigid semiconductor components or flexible film devices, electronic textiles woven from smart fibers have better permeability and flexibility, and are ideal wearable device carriers.

This achievement published in Science is also a great achievement in the field of intelligent fiber.

At present, the development of smart fibers in the world is mostly based on the so-called "von Neumann architecture", that is, the silicon chip is used as the core of information processing to develop various electronic fiber functional modules, such as the sensor fiber for signal acquisition, the conductive fiber for signal transmission, the light-emitting fiber for information display, and the power generation fiber for energy supply. Although these functional modules can be combined into fabric forms, they are highly dependent on chips and batteries, and the volume, weight and rigidity of fabrics are relatively large, which makes it difficult to meet people's needs for textile functionality and comfort at the same time.

This time, the scientific research team of Donghua University pioneered a new type of smart fiber with a "non Von Neumann architecture", integrating energy collection, information perception, signal transmission and other functions into a single fiber, and weaving smart fabrics that do not rely on chips and batteries.

Put a small piece of fabric next to the electromagnetic wave transmitter, and the fabric has lattice embroidery made of smart fibers. As long as you touch the embroidery with your finger, you can see the twinkling spots like Tetris.

This new energy interaction mechanism of "human body coupling" can make new fibers glow and generate electricity unconsciously without any additional energy consumption.

The researcher of the State Key Laboratory of Fiber Material Modification (Donghua University) said: "This fiber can be used in clothing, cloth decoration and other daily textiles. When they contact with the human body, they can visually sense, interact and even highlight lighting through luminescence. At the same time, they can generate unique wireless signals for different postures of the human body, and then conduct wireless remote control for electronic products such as smart appliances. These novel functions are expected to expand the application scenarios of electronic products, and even change the way people live smart lives. "

Science invited experts from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign and Massachusetts Institute of Technology to review and report the achievement, and the review was published at the same time as the paper.

The review points out that this achievement is expected to change the way of interaction between people and the environment as well as between people, and has important implications for the development of functional fibers and the application of intelligent textiles in different fields. In terms of basic research, because this smart fiber and textile can unconsciously collect body touch data on a large scale without interfering with people's daily activities, it can more efficiently and conveniently collect physical information in the process of human interaction with the outside world, which is expected to promote the development of basic models of human physical interaction research.

The Advanced Functional Materials Research Group of Donghua University has been committed to the research of smart fiber materials and devices. It started from the research of graphene conductive fiber in 2012, developed the electrochromic fiber in 2016, and built the first electrochromic and power generation fiber production line in 2018, finally achieving continuous and large-scale preparation. Subsequently, the team has successively developed sensor fibers, light-emitting fibers and temperature regulating fibers that can be continuously prepared... A series of achievements have laid the foundation for deepening the research in the field of smart fibers.

"In the next phase of work, we will deeply study how to make this new fiber collect energy from space more effectively and drive more functions, including display, deformation, computation, artificial intelligence, etc. We believe that in the near future, intelligent clothing can do more, people will become more powerful, and will have better adaptability to the environment." Wang Hongzhi, professor of the State Key Laboratory of Fiber Material Modification, said.