Imagine you can make a yarn, just a regular textile yarn, that you also make into a battery. You can basically hide it in your clothing. A team of researchers is working on this which could well be a significant development for wearable technology.
Consumers could one day get to pick sneakers that fit their personal running style if research on a new model developed at MIT reaches commercial scale.
Biomimetics has helped researchers in Japan to create a device that spins artificial spider silk that closely matches natural spider silk which is biodegradable and ideal for biomedical applications, such as sutures and artificial ligaments.
Scientists at the German Institutes of Textile and Fiber Research (DITF) and the Institut für Bodensysteme (TFI) have designed a fully recyclable, flame-retardant carpet yarn. Till now, it had been difficult to recycle textile-based carpets with flame retardants.
The ever-growing textile industry has a few recycling options for waste fabrics to keep end-of-use clothing articles within the value chain. Experiments showcase a new technology that can separate fibres in mixed fabrics.
Recent advances in electroluminescent threads that can be woven or knitted have facilitated the integration of light-emitting textiles on a large scale to include vast arrays of lighting lines or pixels. A versatile tool that can include light-emitting textiles into fashionable and customised crafts directly onto consumer fabrics can be implemented to suit wide-ranging applications.
Scientists in China have taken inspiration from the polar bear's fur to develop an encapsulated aerogel fibre which will allow for weaving and knitting while at the same time being excellent thermal insulators.
Taking a leaf out of nature, scientists have come up with a superhydrophobic spacer fabric that can be produced industrially to remove oil spills from water surfaces in an energy-saving, cost-effective way and without the use of toxic substances.
Plans to integrate fibres into apparel as sensor patches with flexible circuits took a step forward as researchers have come up with a single strand of fibre that has the flexibility of cotton and the electric conductivity of a polymer, called polyaniline.
