Imagine living in a world where there is countless of possibilities.

Yes that is actually that world you

are living in right now. Everyday scientists, engineers and technologist alike wake up from their beds
with the goal of pushing the frontiers of science and technology. ‘Working to engineer a better
world’ as the Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET) puts it. It has been man’s tradition to
become better and better as a civilization and to preserve it,the whole process of ideation,creation,
and innovation must and should not cease.

Continuing from the 20th century, also dubbed as the Digital Age, society has been accessible to
technology for everyday use and thus became a consumer of science and technology. Research and
Development(R&D) is defined as “creative work undertaken on a systematic basis in order to
increase the stock of knowledge, including knowledge of man, culture and society and the use of this
stock of knowledge to devise new applications” by The Royal Society. And when this is coupled with
innovation,also defined by them to be “implementation of a new or significantly improved product
(good or service)”, there is a framework of translating extensive research into public goods. From
this framework, new products are conceived, building structures made stronger, cars self-drive, toxic
emissions reduced, life standards improved and all those brilliant things we see in our everyday life.

One interesting dimension that may seem to be exclusive from all the science and computations is
apparel, couture and fashion industry. The evolution of fashion can be traced all the way to the early
20th century. From long-skirts to mini-skirts, from stillettos to flat boots, from bell-bottoms to ripped
jeans. The idea of clothing also revolved only around “depicting those people who are finding
themselves” as in 1980’s. It is a form of self-reflection that remains relevant to this day. The fact is
there was little integration between science and fashion. The only science found in the this
aesthetical industry are the usage of chemicals to make synthetic fiber and nitrocelullose to make
artificial silk just to name a few.As designers and engineers begin intersecting ideas between one
another, some elements of science seeped into the fashion industry. For example, a company called
Descience was one of the few that incorporated a surface layer engineered to reflect light of
different colours. It was a clever idea to take advantage of how visible light is
actually made up of a colour gradient from red to violet.
This whole phenomenon was called “refraction” or
commonly known as bending of light. The dress
ultimately mimicked shiny diamonds. There are many
more to this where fashion designers made dress
inspired from biological morphology, cell shapes etc.

However, that is not the end of it. Stepping into the 21 st

century, scientist has another vision of taking the fusion Scattering of light in diamonds

of science and apparel to the next level. As Prof. Yi

(Henry) Li, Chair of Textile Science and Engineering at the
University of Manchester says it, “Looking at the key
drivers to strategic planning to solve industrial problems,
we see that textile sciences is not related. However, it is indeed through textile science”.
Of course we already have seen textile engineered to serve functional and specific purpose like
fireproof jackets to enter burning buildings and kevlars made to withstand bullets in war. These are
called technical textiles. In spite of that, with the globalization of internet, textile science has add the
fusion of information and communication technology(ICT) into the inventory of technical textiles.
This vision is incorporating the sense of our digital age through the concept called “Internet of
Things(IoT)”. This clever vision will refine the way that man will communicate with each other
through the fabrics they put on. Not only that it sets about new perception on how textile will
produce industrial solutions.
In the 21st century, formulating solutions through the IoT concept and textile science uses the idea of
a class of materials called ‘Smart Textiles’. Before we dive in further, we might want to
understanding how the whole paradigm is structured.

Smart Materials, as it is first coined in 1989, was set by the Japanese when they first discovered silk
with shape memory effect(or passive smart materials). Smart Materials are understood to behave in
accordance to the environmental factors or wearer’s specific physiological changes. Then there is
active smart materials. This materials will respond to a stimulus from the environment and will
‘decide’ to execute responses with the help of sensors and actuators(electronic device) integrated
into the fabrics. A simple example would be a sports
undergarment recording the changes of the wearer’s
body temperature.

Now IoT on the other hand is not entirely a foreign

concept. It basically encompasses the fact that through
the globalization of internet, every bit of digital
information is going to bridged from one place to
another through textile. The electronics market predicts
that by 2020, 30 billion devices will be connected and
10% of those devices are smart textiles. Depiction of Internet of Things(IoT) where cloud based system is expanded, source:Pixabay

Health industry was a large consumer in using the idea of e-textile and it still is. 6 years ago, two
professors at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign develop an electronic tattoo. As we place it on
our chest on the outside, it can sync with electrical signals that is generated from the pumping heart
as it contracts and relaxes. A few years later, the sports brand Under Armour developed a product
called Healthbox. A kit that consist of a weighing scale, a sports band and a chest strap which also
adopts the same idea as the elctronic tattoo i.e to detect bloodflow rate and communicates that
data to the phone via bluetooth. OMSignal, a canadian company, in 2015 launched a smart sports
bra. It has a small console sown on the bottom edge which is then connected to a wireless device
that will detect the changes like body temperature, heart rate,pace and your fatigue levels. In the
same year, Clim8 has been doing works on intelligent thermal technology that can intelligently tell
whether the we need heat or not. Through tiny thermosensors(heat sensor) in woven in the fabric,
the clothe is now engineered to regulate our skins’ temperature. This helps by reducing our sweat
production and thus increasing efficiency in performance. Prof. Yi (Henry) Li, says “this area of focus
is to improve the adaptation of the clothes to suit our body’s need to improve athlete’s
performance”. Our olympians might run more and more faster after this!

The medical industry also found benefits from e-textile. For example, in their stunning advert
promoting Healthbox, UA potrayed to us through clouded data, our physicians may as well gain
access to our records from their desk to monitor us daily which is actually a game changer in medical
industry in this century. Numerous of E-textile devices is surging as group of device most connected
to data clouds. We can now rely mostly on the wearable technology. Thus, patients only need to
show up at the physicians desk occasionally for specific in-hospital assessment. The way medical
systems are run will now be more efficient. Not only that, Fieldtex Products, said “this will also be
the future of home healthcare and disease prevention which is more comfortable. The clothes will
be able to detect early signs of a disease from the physiological changes.” in a published article back
in 2018.

To further stabilize the fusion of IoT and textile, researchers are furthering their works
in conductive yarn. As the name suggest, conductive yarn is a material that is able to conduct
electrical current and signals through it. The diameter of this type of yarn is small enough that we
can spin in into fibers then weave it into textile products. Having an electroconductive yarn as a
fundamental material helps integrate microelectronics like supercapacitors. This is because there is
an interface between them and the textile. Generally, metals are electrical conductors. The brilliant
idea here is converting a block of metals into yarns.This is a property of metal called malleability, a
trait that allows metal to be stretched into long,thin wire and yarns. However it is not smart to make
clothing from metals alone. It’s impractical anyway because metals like copper as it will be
uncomfortable, heavy and susceptible to wear. Braiding it with synthetic fibre allows them to weave
it into clothes as both material complements each other. This is a discovery in the early 21st century.

In 2013, Lee, H.M Choi and his research group found out that cotton
fibres with aluminium coatings are are very very good electrical
conductors. After undergoing a sophisticated coating technique
called “electroless metal plating”, the string of yarn has aluminium
coats deposited on it. This is a new generation of conductive yarn.
With better electrical conductivity, the data transmission in the
form electrical signals are more efficient throughout the e-textile
making the usage of these devices more user-friendly and efficient.
Conductive yarns will underpin a lot in the improvement of e-textile
since it acts as both yarns and conductors. As a yarn it enables
weaving and knitting process into clothings and as a conductor is
carries the data that is recorded.

Conductive yarn enable the making of touchscreen gloves ;Source: Amazon

One new possibility of that is about to expand in

textile research is energy storage. This is
particularly advance because it involves
harvesting electrical energy from mechanical
motion or simply making batteries as flexible
strips that can be woven into suits and shirts
then integrating small capacitors using
conductive yarns. A few months ago, a
postgraduate research fellow at the University of
Manchester found an ingenious way of
improving the strength of the coating on the Foldable electronic device such as smartphones and laptops, Source: The University of
Manchester(Youtube)
conducting yarn by using wine. Another possibility
which is more exciting is fabric products such as
handbags or shirts that can change colour according to the us through an app in our smartphones. A
more futuristic idea from the University of Manchester is using their novel graphene to build a
foldable laptop which is feasible due to the graphene’s flexible nature and outstanding electrical
conductivity.

This is proof that different materials can be used as fabric to serve uncommon purposes thus leading
towards crazy,innovative ideas. The question then is “Where do we go from here?”. As stated
earlier, textile research is still active and evolving to better serve as solutions. Billy Hunter, an expert
in material science and author on Inside Composites said, “the story is far from finished”.