Smart textiles are made up of individual devices that are either created from or attached to fibers. While there has been significant progress in developing smart textiles for lighting and display purposes, a large-scale approach for integrating multifunctional devices into traditional textile platforms has yet to be demonstrated. In this study, we have successfully created a 46-inch smart textile lighting and display system that is fully operational. This system includes RGB fibrous LEDs and multifunctional fiber devices capable of wireless power transmission, touch sensing, photodetection, environmental/biosignal monitoring, and energy storage. The smart textile display system is flexible, bendable, and rollable, with the ability to produce vivid RGB lighting and a full-color display with embedded fiber devices that can detect external stimuli. Our design and integration strategies are transformative and provide the basis for creating highly functional smart lighting and display textiles on a large scale for revolutionary applications in smart homes and the Internet of Things (IoT).
Smart textiles, which are electronic devices incorporated into fiber substances, have the freedom of form factor due to the fiber structure and continuous weaving process. In this study, a fully operational 46-inch smart textile lighting/display system consisting of RGB fibrous LEDs coupled with multifunctional fiber devices was realized. The prototype system can be used for smart homes and real-life IoT applications.
The article reports the realization of a fully operational 46-inch smart textile lighting/display system consisting of RGB fibrous LEDs coupled with multifunctional fibre devices that are capable of wireless power transmission, touch sensing, photodetection, environmental/biosignal monitoring, and energy storage. The smart textile display system exhibits full freedom of form factors, including flexibility, bendability, and rollability as a vivid RGB lighting/grey-level-controlled full-color display apparatus with embedded fiber devices that are configured to provide external stimuli detection. The systematic design and integration strategies are transformational and provide the foundation for realizing highly functional smart lighting/display textiles over large areas for revolutionary applications on smart homes and the internet of things (IoT).
The authors have integrated one output (fibre LED) and six input devices that are compatible with symmetric and asymmetric weaving patterns. These include F-radio frequency antenna (F-RF), F-photodetector, F-touch sensor, F-temperature sensor, F-biosensor module, and F-energy storage that assembled within a natural cotton textile platform. Enhanced control over dimension/performance of devices under mechanical alteration of our F-devices enabled responsive output signal expression after the weaving process with long-term stability (over a year). The concept of a smart textile display system for smart homes and real-life IoT applications is built on the developed F-devices delivering processed signals directly to the textile display to enable real-time monitoring/visualizing of those signals. F-LED, F-energy storage, and F-temperature were woven at one time while woven F-RF antenna, F-biosensor module, F-photodetector, and F-touch sensor were integrated as Lego-like manner. This Lego-like design is to suggest post-upgradability, expanding smart textile systems to hundred-inch wide, seamless operation of textile display with additional textile gadgets.
