How to achieve the goal of incorporating semiconductors into textiles to create smart fabrics

do you know? Your clothes can be woven from electronic equipment. Recently, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have made major breakthroughs in wearable technology, successfully embedding high-speed optoelectronic semiconductor devices including light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and photodiodes into fibers, and woven into water-resistant flexible fabrics. Make a communication system from cloth.

This marks the goal of researchers to integrate semiconductors into textiles to create smart fabrics, while filling the gap in complex functional fabric technology in the textile manufacturing industry. Researchers predict that this fiber will grow exponentially in the coming decades.

This week, the research was published in Nature. The authors are Michael Rein, a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a professor in the Department of Materials Science and Electronic Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Yoel Fink, CEO of the fabric company Advanced Functional Fabrics of America (AFFOA), and one from AFFOA, Inman Mills, The team of the Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne and the Lincoln Laboratory.

The conventional manufacturing method of optical fiber is to fabricate an enlarged version of the optical fiber as a preform, and after heating and softening the preform, the obtained optical fiber is stretched under tension.

A key breakthrough in the manufacture of new fibers is the polymerization of a sand-sized luminescent semiconductor diode and a pair of very thin copper wires into a preform. During the heating and stretching of the fibers, the polymer preform is partially liquefied to form long fibers which are distributed along the axial center of the fiber and joined by copper wires.

The semiconductor device used in this process is composed of a light emitting diode (LED) and a photodiode. During the stretching process, the dimensions of the semiconductor and copper wires remain unchanged, and the fibers shrink around the two, and the resulting fiber is subjected to 10 washes to verify its practicability as a clothing material after being woven into a single piece of fabric.

Rein, the first author of the paper, said: "This new process opens up new ideas for fiber manufacturing. Instead of polymerizing all the materials together in liquid form, we are merging metal wires with granular components."

One advantage of the polymeric fiber material itself is its natural water repellency. To prove this, the team put some photoelectric detection fibers into the aquarium. A light outside the aquarium transmits the music to the water fiber in the form of an optical signal. The fiber in the aquarium converts the light pulse into an electrical pulse signal that is ultimately converted into music.

Although the principle of fiber manufacturing sounds simple, it is a long and difficult process to achieve quality and quantity of large-scale production. The method of increasing fiber productivity developed by AFFOA staff is ready to achieve industrial production of this fiber. At the same time, Inman Mills' Marty Ellis has developed a new technology that allows functional fibers to be made into fabrics from traditional large-scale textile machines.

Fink said: "This paper provides a shortcut for incorporating semiconductor devices into fibers. We expect this fiber technology to grow at a rapid rate in the next few years. Today, we have been able to expand some of the basic functions of fabrics, including communications, lighting. , physiological monitoring, etc. In the next few years, fabrics will be able to provide more intelligent services."

Fink said that the initial commercial application of the technology will be communications and security-related products, and the first products will enter the market next year. This will be the first textile communication system. “We are promoting this technology to domestic manufacturers at an unprecedented speed and scale,” he said. “The process from laboratory research to commercialization is very fast. The key to realizing the rapid transformation of scientific research results is to go like AFFOA. Establish a "academic-industry-government" tripartite cooperation."

In addition to commercial applications, Fink said that the US Department of Defense, as a major supporter of AFFOA, is also exploring the use of flexible hardware fabrics in work uniforms.

The researchers also mentioned that in addition to the field of communication, these fibers also have important application value in the biomedical field. For example, a wristband that measures pulse or blood oxygen levels or a bandage that continuously monitors the wound healing process.