Smart Fabric

When we're hot and sweaty, we prefer cool mesh-like clothing, but otherwise … mesh just doesn't keep us warm enough. A new dual-purpose fabric was designed with that conundrum in mind, as it features cooling vents that open upon absorbing sweat.

An experimental new material could help rehabilitate the injured and allow the nonspeaking to "speak," among other potential uses. It's also highly elastic, electrically conductive and self-healing – and it's known as CareGum.

Researchers at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) have developed a novel, high-tech form of fabric that foreshadows a future where items of clothing can"talk" to one another, and purchases might be made with a high-five or wave of the arm.

Currently, if you wish to track the electrical activity of someone's muscles, you have stick electrodes onto their skin. An experimental new technology, however, simply utilizes conductive fabric that's incorporated into washable pieces of clothing.

Imagine if you were an amateur singer or athlete, and you were able to "feel" the manner in which a professional breathes while performing. That's just one of the potential uses of a new "smart" fiber, which could also have medical applications.

Rice University researchers have produced a "smart" shirt that uses interwoven carbon nanotube fibers to provide steady electrical contact with the skin, allowing for ongoing gathering of data on heart activity.

MIT scientist Yoel Fink has been at the cutting edge of smart textile technology for more than a decade and has just made a significant breakthrough, demonstrating the first ever digital fabric-fiber that can store and process information.

It can be frustrating, when the jacket that you initially put on to keep you warm starts making you too hot. Jackets made from an experimental new reversible fabric, however, could both heat and cool their wearer.

Clothing might one day do more than keep us warm, and scientists have offered a compelling new example of what might be possible by developing a new thread made of conductive cellulose, which can be worked into textiles that generate electricity.

When it comes to renewable energy, many cities combine multiple sources, such as solar panels and wind turbines. Scientists have now taken a similar approach with a "smart" shirt that generates electricity via both sweat and movement.

When producing "smart fabrics" made of conductive fibers, it can be difficult placing functional elements such as electrodes in specific locations along those fibers. A new polymer, however, could make doing so much easier.

In order to monitor their wearers' movements, smart fabrics typically incorporate strain-measuring sensors. And while such sensors are often impractically fragile, Harvard University scientists have created a new one that can really take a beating.