Smart textiles woven on regular fabric looms

Smart fabrics have been advancing rapidly in recent years and have previously been woven to create textile displays and other electronic devices. However, this generally requires specialised laboratory equipment or boutique microelectronic fabrication facilities, neither of which are practical for scaled up production.

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“We could make these textiles in specialised microelectronics facilities, but these require billions of pounds of investment,” said Dr Sanghyo Lee, from Cambridge’s Department of Engineering. “In addition, manufacturing smart textiles in this way is highly limited, since everything has to be made on the same rigid wafers used to make integrated circuits, so the maximum size we can get is about 30 centimetres in diameter.”

To make smart fabrics compatible with conventional textile equipment like industrial looms, the Cambridge team first coated them with materials that can withstand stretching. The researchers then wove electronic, optoelectronic, sensing and energy fibre components together in different configurations mixed with conventional fibres. The fibre devices were interconnected by an automated laser welding method with electrically conductive adhesive. To illustrate the capabilities of the new fabrics, the team produced a 46-inch woven demonstrator display. The work is published in Science Advances.