The researchers have demonstrated a method to produce next-generation smart textiles inexpensively and without having to change the technology currently used for textile manufacturing.
The team achieved this by weaving electronic, optoelectronic, sensing and energy fibre components on the same industrial looms used to make conventional textiles. The result was patches of smart fabric, made cheaply and sustainably.
The Cambridge researchers had already demonstrated the ability to make these woven displays with specialised manual laboratory equipment, and other researchers have manufactured smart textiles in microelectronic fabrication facilities.
“We could make these textiles in specialised microelectronics facilities, but these require billions of pounds of investment,” said Dr Sanghyo Lee, a leader of the research. “In addition, manufacturing smart textiles in this way is highly limited, since everything has to be made on the same rigid wafers used...