Functional Fabrics

A ‘smart fabric’ comprises the seamless integration of soft (flexible) electronics within the textile itself. Smart fabrics are still in the R&D stages with prohibitively high manufacturing costs. Through an Army funded project, we have developed energy-storing yarn supercapacitors that retain desirable mechanical attributes and can be knitted or woven into wearable fabrics. Such energy storage devices may become attractive power sources for miniaturized electronic devices such as micro-robots, physiological sensors, and even implantable medical devices, since they can have small volumes and could be easily integrated into all kinds of shaped structures. The developed fiber fabric also can function as lightweight and flexible electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding materials that are needed to protect electronic circuits and portable telecommunication devices from ‘cross-talk’ signals.