Advanced Multimaterial Electronic and Optoelectronic Fibers and Textiles

Abstract

The ability to integrate complex electronic and optoelectronic functionalities within soft and thin fibers is one of today's key advanced manufacturing challenges. Multifunctional and connected fiber devices will be at the heart of the development of smart textiles and wearable devices. These devices also offer novel opportunities for surgical probes and tools, robotics and prostheses, communication systems, and portable energy harvesters. Among the various fiber‐processing methods, the preform‐to‐fiber thermal drawing technique is a very promising process that is used to fabricate multimaterial fibers with complex architectures at micro‐ and nanoscale feature sizes. Recently, a series of scientific and technological breakthroughs have significantly advanced the field of multimaterial fibers, allowing a wider range of functionalities, better performance, and novel applications. Here, these breakthroughs, in the fundamental understanding of the fluid dynamics, rheology, and tailoring of materials microstructures at play in the thermal drawing process, are presented and critically discussed. The impact of these advances on the research landscape in this field and how they offer significant new opportunities for this rapidly growing scientific and technological platform are also discussed.

Flexible Multi‐Material Fibers for Distributed Pressure and Temperature Sensing

“…Thermal drawing is a powerful method to fabricate multimaterial fibers. [4][5][6] First, a macroscopic preform resembles the final fiber geometry and composition is made. The preform is then heated in a furnace for the thermal drawing.…”

Stretchable multifunctional dielectric nanocomposites based on polydimethylsiloxane mixed with metal nanoparticles

“…Fiber materials require electrical sensors, but also mechanical flexibility, stretchability, and scalability. Therefore, industrialized electrical fibers must be multimaterial and capable of scalable production to achieve the above comprehensive performance [42]. The multimaterial property means that scalable stretchable fiber prepared by thermal draw method is used as a carrier, and then the electrical and dielectric materials are packaged or encapsulated [43,44].…”

In-Fiber Structured Particles and Filament Arrays from the Perspective of Fluid Instabilities

“…Over the last decade, this technique has been successfully employed to achieve an altogether different class of multimaterial multi-functional fibers [9]. This specially designed fiber is composed of distinctive components (e.g., semiconductors, insulators, and metals) and complex geometries (e.g., wires, cylindrical shells or layer structures), enabling the sophisticated integrated functionalities (e.g., electronic, optoelectronic, and acoustic), at either a single-fiber level or in large-scale fabrics and textiles, for a broad range of applications in biomedical, optoelectronic and micro/nano technologies [9][10][11][12][13].…”