Flexible displays for smart clothing: Part I-overview

Abstract

This overview describes different technologies and developments over the past few decades that have been used in the production of textile-based flexible displays and screens. The paper covers textile displays based on optical fibres for the use in communicative clothing, fashion or medical applications; large flexible screens based on flexible ribbons and LEDs to make or to create communicative clothing; and low cost, washable ‘textronics’ produced by combining SMD components with textile materials for the production of light-producing multilayered OLED flexible structures. For each technology covered in the review, the examples from the commercial products or from the products under research have been considered to illustrate the concept and its potential applications.