Intelligent textiles make life wirelessly energetic by coupling radiation energy and human

Abstract

By innovatively coupling human body and functional fibers, recent inspiring research achieves radiation energy capture, signal transmission and digital visualization while retains flexibilities, softness and durability of textiles and their large-scale fabrications. The single coupled human-fiber system provides absolutely new mechanism and fibrous method to design and produce intelligent textiles and promises to offer more potential applications in home and daily lives. Smart wearable textiles integrating micro/nano electronics into fibers/garments represent state-of-the-art wearable technology and show great potential applications in healthcare, smart city, intelligent robotics, etc.1 To this end, wearable nanosensors, logic circuits, electronic skin, flexible batteries, etc., are incorporated into fabrics to create stretchable and wearable e-textiles.2 The fundamental components, such as sensing elements, chip systems, energy supplies, and interactions between the wearer and the textiles, represent a huge and interdisciplinary research area. Currently, interactive smart textiles which include technologies such as fiber electronics,3, 4 fiber batteries,5, 6 sensors,7 wearables,8 etc., consistently rely on rigid integrated circuit chips (Figure 1a,b). This dependence is due to the inevitable use of von Neumann architecture–based modular electronic systems. However, the intrinsic rigidity of chips significantly restricts the softness and flexibility of fabrics, which hinders seamless integration and reduces energy efficiency. Although fibers can naturally act as electronic building blocks, achieving energy interaction and signal modulation appears impossible without the use of current rigid-structured and millimeter-scale chips. This limitation also impedes the development of textile wearables, industrial fabrication, and future smart applications. Therefore, it is necessary to explore new strategies for developing highly wearable and intelligent textiles that do not rely on external energy devices or rigid chip. Writing in Science, Yang et al. now report a “chipless body-coupled interactive textiles” that capture ambient electromagnetic (EM) energy and transmit wireless signals for human-environment interactions (Figure 1c,d).9 Intelligent textiles achievement ranging from (a) high-performance long fiber batteries,5 Copyright 2021, Springer Nature. (b) Large-area display textiles.8 Copyright 2021, Springer Nature. (c) Comparison between (left) current wireless interactive textile system based on integrated circuit chips and (right) the chipless, wireless interactive textile system and (d) the principle of body-coupled chipless interactive fiber.9 Copyright 2024, American Association for the Advancement of Science. The key advance of this work lies in employing the functional fiber itself to couple with the human body for radiation energy capture, signal transformation and transmission, large-scale production, and final digital-visualization applications. Specifically, Yang et al. have innovatively designed an ultra-intelligent interactive fiber (i-fiber) that acts simultaneously as both a wireless receiver and transmitter, enabling the continuous manufacture of wearable garments. This design addresses the structural concerns of nonconformal attachment, integration, and endurance in conventional electronic textiles. The smart i-fiber features a three-network cross-linked structure and can be fabricated with three functional layers: an induction layer composed of silver-plated nylon fibers, an energy storage layer consisting of BaTiO3 mixed resin, and an optical layer made by doping Cu2+ into ZnS resin. The coupled body-fiber system can capture ubiquitous daily EM radiation energy ranging from ∼3 Hz to ∼13.56 MHz, thereby forming a body-coupled electric field and capacitance between the human body and the conductive core of the i-fiber. Fibrous optical and sensing electrical signals are activated by instantaneous contact with h