Abstract
Textile electronics are poised to revolutionize future wearable applications due to their wearing comfort and programmable nature. Many promising thermoelectric wearables have been extensively investigated for green energy harvesting and pervasive sensors connectivity. However, the practical applications of the TE textile are still hindered by the current laborious p/n junctions assembly of limited scale and mechanical compliance. Here we develop a gelation extrusion strategy that demonstrates the viability of digitalized manufacturing of continuous p/n TE fibers at high scalability and process efficiency. With such alternating p/n-type TE fibers, multifunctional textiles are successfully woven to realize energy harvesting on curved surface, multi-pixel touch panel for writing and communication. Moreover, modularized TE garments are worn on a robotic arm to fulfill diverse active and localized tasks. Such scalable TE fiber fabrication not only brings new inspiration for flexible devices, but also sets the stage for a wide implementation of multifunctional textile-electronics.
Highlights
Textile electronics are poised to revolutionize future wearable applications due to their wearing comfort and programmable nature
Despite intensive research efforts and advances in textile based TE devices utilizing bismuth telluride[26], carbon nanotube (CNT)[27], poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT)[28], or polyaniline[29], fabrics comprised of TE are only at the early stage and far from practical implementation, largely due to unavailability of industrially scalable and cost-effective fabrication techniques
The flexible TE fibers consisting of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) (Supplementary Fig. 1 and Supplementary Fig. 2) and polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) hydrocolloids were fabricated through a continuously alternating extrusion process (Fig. 1a, Supplementary Movie 1)
Summary
Textile electronics are poised to revolutionize future wearable applications due to their wearing comfort and programmable nature. We develop a gelation extrusion strategy that demonstrates the viability of digitalized manufacturing of continuous p/n TE fibers at high scalability and process efficiency With such alternating p/ntype TE fibers, multifunctional textiles are successfully woven to realize energy harvesting on curved surface, multi-pixel touch panel for writing and communication. Taking the advantages of hydrocolloid constituted network and its rheological property, superior confinement of heterogeneous molecular particles within the continuous matrix is apt to produce high homogeneity, good interface bonding and alternating p/n-type segments Such axially-aligned p/n-type TE fibers dramatically reduce the complexity of the subsequent integration in textile electronics, which provide additional possibilities for multifunctional configurability. Through weaving of the alternating p/n-type TE fibers into fabrics, TE textiles can perform diverse functions, including conformal heat energy harvesting cloth, localized touch panel for display and light orientation sensing for communication
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