Textiles have been
concomitant of human civilization for thousands
of years. With the advances in chemistry and materials, integrating
textiles with energy harvesters will provide a sustainable, environmentally
friendly, pervasive, and wearable energy solution for distributed
on-body electronics in the era of Internet of Things. This article
comprehensively and thoughtfully reviews research activities regarding
the utilization of smart textiles for harvesting energy from renewable
energy sources on the human body and its surroundings. Specifically,
we start with a brief introduction to contextualize the significance
of smart textiles in light of the emerging energy crisis, environmental
pollution, and public health. Next, we systematically review smart
textiles according to their abilities to harvest biomechanical energy,
body heat energy, biochemical energy, solar energy as well as hybrid
forms of energy. Finally, we provide a critical analysis of smart
textiles and insights into remaining challenges and future directions.
With worldwide efforts, innovations in chemistry and materials elaborated
in this review will push forward the frontiers of smart textiles,
which will soon revolutionize our lives in the era of Internet of
Things.
Traditional public health systems
are suffering from limited, delayed,
and inefficient medical services, especially when confronted with
the pandemic and the aging population. Fusing traditional textiles
with diagnostic, therapeutic, and protective medical devices can unlock
electronic textiles (e-textiles) as point-of-care platform technologies
on the human body, continuously monitoring vital signs and implementing
round-the-clock treatment protocols in close proximity to the patient.
This review comprehensively summarizes the research advances on e-textiles
for wearable point-of-care systems. We start with a brief introduction
to emphasize the significance of e-textiles in the current healthcare
system. Then, we describe textile sensors for diagnosis, textile therapeutic
devices for medical treatment, and textile protective devices for
prevention, by highlighting their working mechanisms, representative
materials, and clinical application scenarios. Afterward, we detail
e-textiles’ connection technologies as the gateway for real-time
data transmission and processing in the context of 5G technologies
and Internet of Things. Finally, we provide new insights into the
remaining challenges and future directions in the field of e-textiles.
Fueled by advances in chemistry and materials science, textile-based
diagnostic devices, therapeutic devices, protective medical devices,
and communication units are expected to interact synergistically to
construct intelligent, wearable point-of-care textile platforms, ultimately
illuminating the future of healthcare system in the Internet of Things
era.
This article provides a fundamental understanding of the physiology of body thermoregulation and the advances in thermoregulatory textile technologies, and a perspective on future textiles for personalized thermoregulation.
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