Electronic fibers and textiles: Recent progress and perspective

Abstract

Wearable electronics are receiving increasing attention with the advances of human society and technologies. Among various types of wearable electronics, electronic fibers/textiles, which integrate the comfort and appearance of conventional fibers/textiles with the functions of electronic devices, are expected to play important roles in remote health monitoring, disease diagnosis/treatment, and human-machine interface. This article aims to review the recent advances in electronic fibers/textiles, thus providing a comprehensive guiding reference for future work. First, we review the selection of functional materials and fabrication strategies of fiber-shaped electronic devices with emphasis on the newly developed functional materials and technologies. Their applications in sensing, light emitting, energy harvest, and energy storage are discussed. Then, the fabrication strategies and applications of electronic textiles are summarized. Furthermore, the integration of multifunctional electronic textiles and their applications are summarized. Finally, we discuss the existing challenges and propose the future development of electronic fibers/textiles.

Keywords: Electronic materials; Fibrous material; Materials property.

Graphical abstract

Figure 1

An overview showing the field of electronic fibers/textiles, including the conductive materials, the structures and properties, and their applications in wearable electronics for intelligent body. Reprinted with permission from (He et al., 2019). Copyright 2019, AAAS. Reprinted with permission from (Park et al., 2019). Copyright 2019, American Chemical Society. Reprinted with permission from (Zhang et al., 2019). Copyright 2019, Elsevier. Reprinted with permission from (Liu et al., 2015a). Copyright 2015, Nature Publishing Group.

Figure 2

Metals and functional polymers for fabrication of electronic fibers (A) Constant-scale and scale-down co-drawing strategy of flexible fiber probe. Reprinted with permission from Leber et al. (2020). Copyright 2020, Wiley-VCH. (B) Fabrication of rGO/Ni-cotton yarn composite electrodes for FSCs. Reprinted with permission from Liu et al. (2015a). Copyright 2015, Nature Publishing Group. (C) The fabrication process of highly stretchable conductive fibers reinforcing Ag nanowires for wearable electronics. Reprinted with permission from Lee et al. (2015). Copyright 2015, Wiley-VCH. (D) PEDOT:PSS fiber prepared by the wet-spinning processes. Digital photograph and scanning electron microscopy image of PEDOT:PSS fiber and digital photographs of the fibers woven on the surface of cotton glove fabrics. Reprinted with permission from Yuan et al. (2016). Copyright 2016, The Royal Society of Chemistry. (E) Structure and display function of the electrochromic FSC. Reprinted with permission from Chen et al. (2014). Copyright 2014, Wiley-VCH. (F) Fabrication process of organohydrogel fibers and their multifunctional applications in electrodes, optical devices, and sensors. Reprinted with permission from Song et al. (2020). Copyright 2020, Wiley-VCH.

Figure 3

Carbon-based nanomaterials as active materials or conductive additives for flexible and wearable electronic devices (A) Carbon sources, synthesis methods, and formations of carbon-based fibers. Reprinted with permission from Chen et al. (2020b). Copyright 2020, American Chemical Society. (B) Hierarchically buckled sheath-core CNT/PU fibers for super-elastic electronics, sensors, and muscles. Reprinted with permission from Liu et al. (2015b). Copyright 2015, AAAS. (C) Schematic diagram of preparing the bionic, super-elastic, and conductive PU filaments with worm-shaped graphene microlayer. Reprinted with permission from Sun et al. (2019). Copyright 2019, American Chemical Society.

Figure 4

Fiber-shaped electronic devices for wearable sensors (A) Nanomesh pressure sensor for monitoring finger manipulation without sensory interference. Reprinted with permission from Lee et al. (2020b). Copyright 2020, AAAS. (B) Weavable tunicate cellulose/CNT fibers for high-performance wearable sensors. Reprinted with permission from Cho et al. (2019). Copyright 2019, American Chemical Society. (C) Inflight fiber printing toward array and 3D optoelectronic and sensing architectures. Reprinted with permission from Wang et al. (2020c). Copyright 2020, AAAS. (D) Functionalized helical fiber bundles of CNTs as electrochemical sensors for long-term in vivo monitoring of multiple disease biomarkers. Reprinted with permission from Wang et al. (2020b). Copyright 2020, Nature Publishing Group. (E) GO/SA microribbons composed of directionally self-assembled nanoflakes employing 3D printing as highly stretchable ionic neural electrodes. Reprinted with permission from Zhang et al. (2020b). Copyright 2020, National Academy of Sciences.

Figure 5

Fibrous electronics for flexible light-emitting devices. (A) Schematic illustration of an elastic perovskite solar cells fiber. Reprinted with permission from Deng et al. (2015). Copyright 2015, The Royal Society of Chemistry. (B) Schematic illustration of a PLEC fiber. Reprinted with permission from Zhang et al. (2015). Copyright 2015, Nature Publishing Group. (C) Schematic illustration of a fiber-shaped OLED and photograph of the OLED as a flexible light-emitting device. Reprinted with permission from Kwon et al. (2018). Copyright 2018, American Chemical Society. (D) Fabrication process for the coaxially coated light-emitting carbon nanotube fiber by a layer-by-layer method. Reprinted with permission from Jamali et al. (2020). Copyright 2020, American Chemical Society. (E) Super-stretchable electroluminescent fibers as textile display for electronic and brain-interfaced communications. Reprinted with permission from Zhang et al. (2018). Copyright 2018, Wiley-VCH. (F) Schematic illustration showing a multicore-shell print head and the printed 1D stretchable ACEL device. Reprinted with permission from Liu et al. (2020). Copyright 2020, The Royal Society of Chemistry.

Figure 6

Fiber-shaped devices for flexible and wearable energy management (A–C) The mechanism of piezoelectric (A), triboelectric (B), and thermoelectric (C) nanogenerators, respectively. Reprinted with permission from Huang et al. (2020). Copyright 2020, Wiley-VCH. (D) Schematic illustration of a flexible piezoelectric nanogenerator based on organic-inorganic metal halide perovskite (OMHP) materials and their polymer composites. Reprinted with permission from Jella et al. (2019). Copyright 2019, Elsevier. (E) Schematic illustration of a TENG. Reprinted with permission from Seung et al. (2015). Copyright 2015, American Chemical Society. (F) Schematic illustration of the assembly process of TEGs composed of organic thermoelectric polymers and CNTs. Reprinted with permission from Kim et al. (2014). Copyright 2014, American Chemical Society.

Figure 7

Fiber-shaped devices for flexible and wearable energy storage devices (A–C) Schematic representation for three configured methods with parallel structure (A), twisted structure (B), and coaxial structure (C) for fiber-shaped batteries. Reprinted with permission from Mo et al. (2020). Copyright 2020, Wiley-VCH.

Figure 8

Fabrication and applications of electronic textiles (A) Motion-driven electroluminescence textile that was woven using the ZnS:Cu-embedded PDMS composite fibers and PTFE fibers. Reprinted with permission from Park et al. (2019). Copyright 2019, American Chemical Society. (B) Machine-knitted washable sensor array textile for monitoring epidermal physiological signal. Reprinted with permission from Fan et al. (2020). Copyright 2020, AAAS. (C) Schematic illustration of energy storage textiles for powering wearable sensor and charging the mobile phone. Reprinted with permission from Li et al. (2018b). Copyright 2018, Wiley-VCH. (D) Photograph of the conductive silk yarn knit into a logo pattern on a cloth by an embroidery machine. Reprinted with permission from Ye et al. (2019). Copyright 2019, Elsevier. (E) Screen-printed washable electronic textiles as self-powered touch/gesture tribo-sensors for intelligent human-machine interaction. Reprinted with permission from Cao et al. (2018). Copyright 2018, American Chemical Society. (F) 3D printed smart patterns for multifunctional energy-management electronic textiles. Reprinted with permission from Zhang et al. (2019). Copyright 2019, Elsevier. (G) Carbonized commercial silk textile for wearable strain sensors. Reprinted with permission from Wang et al. (2016a). Copyright 2016, Wiley-VCH. (H) Carbonized electrospun silk nanofiber membrane for transparent and sensitive electronic skin. Reprinted with permission from Wang et al. (2017b). Copyright 2017, Wiley-VCH. (I) Direct laser writing of Janus graphene/Kevlar textile for intelligent protective clothing. Reprinted with permission from Wang et al. (2020a). Copyright 2020, American Chemical Society.

Figure 9

Integration of multifunctional electronic textiles and their applications (A) In-series fiber-shaped electrochemical capacitors with high output voltages mimicking electric eels. Reprinted with permission from Sun et al. (2016). Copyright 2016, Wiley-VCH. (B) Coaxial wire FSCs integrated with CuInS₂ photodetector for a wearable integrated system. Reprinted with permission from Li et al. (2018a). Copyright 2018, Wiley-VCH. (C) Structures of fibers with functions of energy harvesting, storage, and utilization. Reprinted with permission from Han et al. (2021). Copyright 2021, American Chemical Society. (D) Integration of direct current fabric TENG and solid-state FSCs for bio-motion energy harvest and storage. Reprinted with permission from Chen et al. (2020a). Copyright 2020, American Chemical Society. (E) Self-charging power textile integrated with TENGs and FSCs. Reprinted with permission from Cong et al. (2020). Copyright 2020, American Chemical Society.