WEAVeING: Wearable Advanced fibre-based Electronics Integrated Manufacturing

Wearable electronics are at the core of academic and industrial research and development as they present a market opportunity in excess of $53 billion in the RCUK strategic areas of healthcare and wellbeing, energy. This technology promises to play a key role in enabling the Internet of Things and integrated electronic systems, such as the Body Area Network concept. Wearable electronics currently relies on rigid and flexible electronic technologies which offer limited skin-compatibility in many circumstances, suffer washing and are uncomfortable to wear because they are not breathable. Turning textiles into electronic components will address these issues, by unlocking ultimately wearable electronics potential through electronic textiles. Work is already underway to have breathable, washable and skin-compatible electronic textiles. However, progress towards wearable all-textile electronic devices and integrated systems has been held back by the absence of circuit design rules and textile integration processes for fibre-based components, which challenges the large-scale manufacturing of integrated textile circuits. Despite individual device demonstration, both integration processes lack from figures of merit and design rules, which consider electronics on a textile form factor and allow linking the physical properties of fibre-based components with the final device performances. This has been key in the establishment and standardisation of planar silicon-based electronics as we know it, and represents a fundamental enabling step for the large-scale implementation of wearable electronic textiles. Without design rules and integration processes, it is extremely difficult to develop competitive wearable devices suitable for commercialisation.
WEAVeING will pioneer the innovative manufacturing tools to enable wearable electronic textile integrated systems by developing electronic textile design and large-scale integration processes for washable, breathable and skin-compatible fibre-based electronic components.

My plan is to develop the design rules and production processes enabling the manufacturing of all-textile electronic devices that are washable, breathable and compatible with the human skin as required by healthcare and wellbeing applications. This project will identify the properties state-of-the-art electronic and optoelectronic fibres to develop the Figures of Merit and integration platforms delivering design, testing and sustainable manufacturing of integrated electronic textile circuits. The beneficiaries of the project will be the UK's national chemical, textile, healthcare, fashion, energy, electronic and lighting industries, where the new platform, skills and know-how developed could be quickly implemented, but more widely will be the different communities of end users that will benefit from new low-cost, low-power, wearable electronic devices integrated in general and technical wear (e.g. fashion & wellbeing) as well as medical tools (e.g. smart patches). The project will have a strong alignment with industry needs and engages with the project collaborators. I am already in discussion with several companies that will benefit from this work such as Google Inc, FlexEnable Ltd, Metier Ltd, SmartLife Ltd, HeathCoat Ltd, Eni SpA. Their unique expertise in the field of electronic textiles and integration with general- and sports-wear is key to maximize the industrial appeal of WEAVeING technology and facilitate the knowledge transfer. Two general meetings with the industrial and academic partners will be held at the end of the first and second year respectively, having the purpose to present and update industrial partners on the latest results of the project, define/update a quick route to industrial impact as well as acquiring useful information to define the internal strategy based on industrial feedbacks.
Moreover, the results of this project will contribute to strongly enhance the averall research field of wearable medical sensors and actuators and future devices for human-computer interaction.
- Economic Impact. The total predicted market for wearable electronics is $180Bn by 2020 from which >$80Bn in the RCUK strategic area of Healthcare and Wellbeing. The electronic textile technology will be disseminated to the UK industrial sector through direct interaction with relevant actors in the fields of system integration (FlexEnable), large-area electronic textiles development (HeatCoat) and healthcare and wellbeing applications (SmartLife and Metier). This project will also seek economic impact by disseminating the results of the project via workshops and conferences organized by special interest groups or catapults involving the industrial community. The engagement with IDTechEx will provide a regular update on the market trends to the team and access to the largest wearable electronics tradeshow. A textile display demonstrator will be presented to the same tradeshow, at the end of two years.
- Societal impact: The manufacturing of robust all-textile electronic devices will contribute to address national societal challenges such as accessible healthcare treatment for resource-poor areas, and sustainable economic development: offering a an innovative manufacturing technology for cost-effective, low-power, safe, wearable and bio-compatible smart patches for medical monitoring, treatment and rehabilitation that will facilitate democratisation of healthcare treatments. Towards the end of the project I will explore the integration of the ECG monitoring system and the light-emitting textile display to design a wearable patch in light-therapy devices for treatment of skin diseases and stimulating anti-inflammatory effect. To maximize the impact and dissemination of project's results I will organize a satellite workshop at IDTechEx 2021.
Finally, WEAVeING will not only generate a return in terms of professional development and know-how, but it will develop a plafrom for a strong future industry to consolidate in the UK.