Smart fibers and textiles for emerging clothe-based wearable electronics: materials, fabrications and applications

Abstract

The development of fibers and textiles span the entire history of human science and technology as well as civilization. The emerging wearable electronics is attracting enormous attention compared with traditional rigid and brittle devices, as it could conform to the curved human body with complex morphology and adapt to intense movements naturally. Smart fibers and textiles are highly desirable due to their attractive properties such as lightweight, breathability, weavability, stretchability, and excellent adaptability to arbitrary mechanical deformations during daily human activities. Furthermore, smart fibers and textiles have been regarded as ideal building blocks to weave flexible and stretchable electronics, which holds great promise in emerging clothe-based wearable applications. This review comprehensively summarizes the state-of-the-art achievement and advancement of smart fibers and textiles for emerging wearable electronics, including fiber/textile-based breathable substrates, conductive materials, manufacturing methods and their applications in emerging wearable electronics such as stretchable conductive fibers, soft sensors, personal healthcare, entertainment and thermal management. We mainly focus on smart fibers and textiles with high-comfort wearing experience and intelligent functions, which could seamlessly integrate the advantages of traditional clothes and electronic devices, and discuss the strategies and mechanisms that are suitable for fabricating high-performance smart fibers and textiles with excellent mechanical deformability and wearable reliability. Finally, critical analysis on the opportunities, challenges as well as future development directions of smart fibers and textiles in emerging clothe-based wearable electronics are also presented.