Smart textiles: Challenges and opportunities

TLDR

Smart textiles research integrates electronics into unconventional environments, leveraging high‑speed large‑area functionalization to generate innovative solutions that push scientific boundaries. This review surveys the history, main trends, and technological challenges of smart textiles, and identifies key research challenges. The authors describe textile fabrication methods, interconnects, sensors, output devices, and the integration of commercial components into textile architectures, then examine representative systems and future prospects. Representative smart textile systems are presented, and the authors forecast future developments in the field.

Abstract

Smart textiles research represents a new model for generating creative and novel solutions for integrating electronics into unusual environments and will result in new discoveries that push the boundaries of science forward. A key driver for smart textiles research is the fact that both textile and electronics fabrication processes are capable of functionalizing large-area surfaces at very high speeds. In this article we review the history of smart textiles development, introducing the main trends and technological challenges faced in this field. Then, we identify key challenges that are the focus of ongoing research. We then proceed to discuss fundamentals of smart textiles: textile fabrication methods and textile interconnect lines, textile sensor, and output device components and integration of commercial components into textile architectures. Next we discuss representative smart textile systems and finally provide our outlook over the field and a prediction for the future.