E-textiles, also known as electronic textiles or smart textiles, are fabrics that enable computing, digital components, and electronics to be embedded in them. Part of the development of wearable technology, they are known as intelligent clothing or smart clothing because they allow for the incorporation of built-in technological elements in everyday textiles and clothes. Electronic textiles do not strictly encompass wearable computing because emphasis is placed on the seamless integration between the fabric and the electronic elements, such as cables, microcontrollers, sensors and actuators.
One of the pioneers in electronic textiles is Rehmi Post, a Visiting Scientist at the MIT Center for Bits and Atoms, who earned his a M.Sc. at the MIT Media Lab for the development of e-broidery,[1] a means of fabricating electronic circuitry on wash-and-wear textile substrates. Examples of his pioneering work in this field have appeared widely in museum collections, including a long-term loan to the Wellcome Wing of London's Museum of Science.
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The field of e-textiles can be divided into two main categories:
There are a number of research and commercial projects that comprise the use of hybrid structures between both categories. In this case, advanced electronic components that are embedded into the textile fiber are connected to a classical electronic device or component. Some examples are touch buttons that are constructed completely in textile forms by using conducting textile weaves, and then connected to devices such as music players[2] or LEDs that are mounted on woven conducting fiber networks to form displays.[3]
Just as in classical electronics, the construction of electronic capabilities on textile fibers requires the use of conducting and semi-conducting materials such as a Conductive textile There are a number of commercial fibers today that include metallic fibers mixed with textile fibers to form conducting fibers that can be woven or sewn. However, because both metals and classical semiconductors are stiff material, they are not very suitable for textile fiber applications for which fibers are subjected to much stretch and bending during use.
A new class of electronic materials that is more suitable for e-textiles is the class of organic electronics materials, because they can be conducting, semiconducting, and designed as inks and plastics.
Some of the most advanced functions that have been demonstrated in the lab include:
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