Cheaper method for making woven displays and smart fabrics – of any size or shape
VIDEO: RESEARCHERS HAVE DEVELOPED NEXT-GENERATION SMART TEXTILES – INCORPORATING LEDS, SENSORS, ENERGY HARVESTING, AND STORAGE – THAT CAN BE PRODUCED INEXPENSIVELY, IN ANY SHAPE OR SIZE, USING THE SAME MACHINES USED TO MAKE THE CLOTHING WE WEAR EVERY DAY. view more
CREDIT: SANGHYO LEE
Researchers have developed next-generation smart textiles – incorporating LEDs, sensors, energy harvesting, and storage – that can be produced inexpensively, in any shape or size, using the same machines used to make the clothing we wear every day.
The international team, led by the University of Cambridge, have previously demonstrated that woven displays can be made at large sizes, but these earlier examples were made using specialised manual laboratory equipment. Other smart textiles can be manufactured in specialised microelectronic fabrication facilities, but these are highly expensive and produce large volumes of waste.
However, the team found that flexible displays and smart fabrics can be made much more cheaply, and more sustainably, by weaving electronic, optoelectronic, sensing and energy fibre components on the same industrial looms used to make conventional textiles. Their results, reported in the journal Science Advances, demonstrate how smart textiles could be an alternative to larger electronics in sectors including automotive, electronics, fashion and construction.
Despite recent progress in the development of smart textiles, their functionality, dimensions and shapes have been limited by current manufacturing processes.
“We could make these textiles in specialised microelectronics facilities, but these require billions of pounds of investment,” said Dr Sanghyo Lee from Cambridge’s Department of Engineering, the paper’s first author. “In addition, manufacturing smart textiles in this way is highly limited, since everything has to be made on the same rigid wafers used to make integrated circuits, so the maximum size we can get is about 30 centimetres in diameter.”
“Smart textiles have also been limited by their lack of practicality,” said Dr Luigi Occhipinti, also from the Department of Engineering, who co-led the research. “You think of the sort of bending, stretching and folding that normal fabrics have to withstand, and it’s been a challenge to incorporate that same durability into smart textiles.”
Last year, some of the same researchers showed that if the fibres used in smart textiles were coated with materials that can withstand stretching, they could be compatible with conventional weaving processes. Using this technique, they produced a 46-inch woven demonstrator display.
Now, the researchers have shown that smart textiles can be made using automated processes, with no limits on their size or shape. Multiple types of fibre devices, including energy storage devices, light-emitting diodes, and transistors were fabricated, encapsulated, and mixed with conventional fibres, either synthetic or natural, to build smart textiles by automated weaving. The fibre devices were interconnected by an automated laser welding method with electrically conductive adhesive.
The processes were all optimised to minimise damage to the electronic components, which in turn made the smart textiles durable enough to withstand the stretching of an industrial weaving machine. The encapsulation method was developed to consider the functionality of the fibre devices, and the mechanical force and thermal energy were investigated systematically to achieve the automated weaving and laser-based interconnection, respectively.
The research team, working in partnership with textile manufacturers, were able to produce test patches of smart textiles of roughly 50x50 centimetres, although this can be scaled up to larger dimensions and produced in large volumes.
“These companies have well-established manufacturing lines with high throughput fibre extruders and large weaving machines that can weave a metre square of textiles automatically,” said Lee. “So when we introduce the smart fibres to the process, the result is basically an electronic system that is manufactured exactly the same way other textiles are manufactured.”
The researchers say it could be possible for large, flexible displays and monitors to be made on industrial looms, rather than in specialised electronics manufacturing facilities, which would make them far cheaper to produce. Further optimisation of the process is needed, however.
“The flexibility of these textiles is absolutely amazing,” said Occhipinti. “Not just in terms of their mechanical flexibility, but the flexibility of the approach, and to deploy sustainable and eco-friendly electronics manufacturing platforms that contribute to the reduction of carbon emissions and enable real applications of smart textiles in buildings, car interiors and clothing. Our approach is quite unique in that way.”
The research was supported in part by the European Union and UK Research and Innovation.
Researchers have developed next-generation smart textiles – incorporating LEDs, sensors, energy harvesting, and storage – that can be produced inexpensively, in any shape or size, using the same machines used to make the clothing we wear every day.
CREDIT
Sanghyo Lee
JOURNAL
Science Advances
ARTICLE TITLE
Truly form-factor–free industrially scalable system integration for electronic textile architectures with multifunctional fiber devices
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
21-Apr-2023
Synthetic biology meets fashion in engineered silk
Engineers developed a method to create synthetic spider silk at high yields while retaining strength and toughness using mussel foot proteins
Peer-Reviewed PublicationScientists have long been intrigued by the remarkable properties of spider silk, which is stronger than steel yet incredibly lightweight and flexible. Now, Fuzhong Zhang, a professor of energy, environmental and chemical engineering at the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, has made a significant breakthrough in the fabrication of synthetic spider silk, paving the way for a new era of sustainable clothing production.
Since engineering recombinant spider silk in 2018 using bacteria, Zhang has been working to increase the yield of silk threads produced from microbes while maintaining its desirable properties of enhanced strength and toughness.
Higher yields will be critical if synthetic silk is to be used in everyday applications, particularly in the fashion industry where renewable materials are much in demand to stem the environmental impacts that come from producing an estimated 100 billion garments and 92 million tons of waste each year.
With the help of an engineered mussel foot protein, Zhang has created new spider silk fusion proteins, called bi-terminal Mfp fused silks (btMSilks). Microbial production of btMSilks have eightfold higher yields than recombinant silk proteins, and the btMSilk fibers have substantially improved strength and toughness while being lightweight. This could revolutionize clothing manufacturing by providing a more eco-friendly alternative to traditional textiles. The findings were published April 14 in Nature Communications.
“The outstanding mechanical properties of natural spider silk come from its very large and repetitive protein sequence,” Zhang said. “However, it is extremely challenging to ask fast-growing bacteria to produce a lot of repetitive proteins.
“To solve this problem, we needed a different strategy,” he said. “We went looking for disordered proteins that can be genetically fused to silk fragments to promote molecular interaction, so that strong fibers can be made without using large repetitive proteins. And we actually found them right here in work we’ve already been doing on mussel foot proteins.”
Mussels secrete these specialized proteins on their feet to stick to things. Zhang and his collaborators have engineered bacteria to produce them and engineer them as adhesives for biomedical applications. As it turns out, mussel foot proteins are also cohesive, which enables them to stick to each other well, too. By placing mussel foot protein fragments at the ends of his synthetic silk protein sequences, Zhang created a less repetitive, lightweight material that’s at least twice as strong as recombinant spider silk.
The yields on Zhang’s material increased eightfold compared with past studies, reaching 8 grams of fiber material from 1 liter of bacterial culture. This output constitutes enough fabric to test for use in real products.
“The beauty of synthetic biology is that we have lots of space to explore,” Zhang said. “We can cut and paste sequences from various natural proteins and test these designs in the lab for new properties and functions. This makes synthetic biology materials much more versatile than traditional petroleum-based materials.”
In coming work, Zhang and his team will expand the tunable properties of their synthetic silk fibers to meet the exact needs of each specialized market.
“Because our synthetic silk is made from cheap feedstock using engineered bacteria, it presents a renewable and biodegradable replacement for petroleum-derived fiber materials like nylon and polyester,” Zhang said.
Li J, Jiang B, Chang X, Yu H, Han Y, Zhang F. Bi-terminal fusion of intrinsically-disordered mussel foot protein fragments boosts mechanical strength for protein fibers. Nature Communications, April 14, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-37563-0
This research was supported by the United States Department of Agriculture (20196702129943) and National Science Foundation (DMR-2207879 and OIA-2219142).
JOURNAL
Nature Communications
METHOD OF RESEARCH
Experimental study
ARTICLE TITLE
Bi-terminal fusion of intrinsically-disordered mussel foot protein fragments boosts mechanical strength for protein fibers
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