Scientists Develop Innovative Clothing that Communicates Optically with Other Devices

New York: Researchers have, for the first time, produced fibres with embedded electronics that are so flexible they can be woven into soft washable fabrics and made into wearable clothing - innovative clothing. Embedding high-speed optoelectronic semiconductor devices, including light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and diode photodetectors, into washable fabrics also makes it possible to produce innovative clothing that communicates optically with other devices.

This discovery could unleash a new ‘Moore’s Law’ for fibres, in other words, a rapid progression in which the capabilities of fibres would grow rapidly and exponentially over time, said researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston. The key breakthrough for producing these new fibres (for innovative clothing) was to add to the preform light-emitting semiconductor diodes the size of a grain of sand, and a pair of copper wires a fraction of a hair’s width. When heated in a furnace during the fibre-drawing process, the polymer preform partially liquifies, forming a long fibre with the diodes lined up along its centre and connected by the copper wires - innovative clothing that communicates.

In this case, the solid components were two types of electrical diodes made using standard microchip technology: LEDs and photo-sensing diodes. The resulting fibres were then woven into fabrics, which were laundered 10 times to demonstrate their practicality as possible material for clothing. (IANS)