Sustainable heterogenoUs e-textileS for impercepTible humAn INterfaces (SUSTAIN)

Textiles date back to over 8,000 years and are the most pervasive and closest interface to humans. Unlike existing wearable technologies, electronic textiles (e-textiles or smart textiles) can become fully imperceptible and have the potential to revolutionise sensing, healthcare, and digital human interfaces. However, integrating electronics in textiles and withstanding the rigours of use is far from trivial, and published work remains impractical.

The vision of this programme grant (PG), SUSTAIN, is to address the fundamental research challenges that currently limit the application of e-textile technology enabling it to become highly functional, practical, sustainable, convenient, and truly imperceptible to the user. The programme enables cross-disciplinary challenges in electronics, materials and manufacturing, circular economy (CE), textile engineering, and garment design to be jointly tackled through cross-linked work packages (WPs). Our overarching goals are to:

Create an array of novel heterogeneous e-textile components and sub-systems.
To develop a range of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)- and design-driven electronic integration flows for responsible e-textiles.
Co-create demonstrators fusing our design and manufacturing approaches spanning exemplar applications in health and fitness monitoring, smart workwear, and sports performance.
Our research crosses disciplinary boundaries to deliver these goals through novel topologies for heterogeneous electronic devices that address the fundamental limitations of state-of-the-art e-textiles. Split into three technical WPs, we will develop novel sensing modalities and interfaces (WP1), wireless and RF technologies for connectivity power, and sensing (WP2), and energy harvesting and storage devices (WP3). These technical WPs are guided by 3 cross-cutting WPs addressing holistic garment design and co-creation challenges (WP4), sustainable manufacturing and life-cycle assessments (WP5), and bi-directional user- and stakeholder engagement (WP6). A programme grant approach is required to bring these elements together and ensure practical, sustainable, user-centric e-textile developments.

The technical challenges addressed across WPs 1-3 are highly interlinked. For example, direct wireless RF interfaces will be co-designed with electrochemical biomarker sensors, multiplexed using flexible and organic semiconductors. In energy harvesting and wireless power, large-area devices such as textile rectennas and supercapacitors or batteries will be co-designed in self-storing energy modules. Moreover, triboelectric sensors and power harvesters will be co-designed with garment considerations and interface electronics to overcome their fundamental performance limitations. The enabling semiconductor devices will comprise bespoke and off-the-shelf heterogeneous devices across device technologies, driven by life-cycle assessments to minimise their environmental footprint while maximising reliability, creating garment-scale "chiplets".