The Sophisticated Threads behind a Hat That Senses Traffic Lights

Complex threads behind the hat that feels traffic lights

TO Sang dhara Edited Well, Guarino

A team of engineers -electrics and scientific fabrics invented a hat that informs its owner when it is safe to cross the road. Researchers, confirmed by the concept, are knitted with Germany, who may feel changing traffic lights and inform pedestrian visual impairments when they are clear for walking. This prototype shows how fibers with semiconductor It can be woven into functional clothing that collects, processes and stores information, and once can lead to computers that can be worn as clothes.

The manufacture of conductive fibers, which are bruised enough to use in clothing, is not easy. The crystalline forms of silicon and Germany elements used, the industrial industry industry for their optical and electrical properties can be enclosed in a protective shell, and then rotate in strong threads. Previous attempts that used a process called Thermal drawing Only strands could produce, which were usually too short (usually no more than a few tens of centimeters) and left fractures or other turning off flaws in the nuclei. But now, for the first time, the researchers have developed method This creates long, flexible fibers with intact light and electronic properties-as a wicker hat proved. The team described these results in a recent study in NatureField

In the typical process of thermal pattern, silicon is placed in a glass tube and heats up until both material become soft enough to stretch into thin fibers. But “since silicon and glass external jacket are completely different, when we heat them, they will show completely different behavior” in their ability to stretch, says the senior author of a new study Lei WeiWhich explores functional fabrics at the Singapore Technological University of Nanyan. The difference is how these materials expand or contract can emphasize the fibers and break their semiconductor core. “Stress is a killer,” says Wei.

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To solve this problem, Vey and his team brought mehanika engineers to help determine the forces that play at each stage of the heating and stretching process. “We used their theory to direct our choice of materials,” says Wei. As soon as the authors of the study found the right combinations, they were able to do Fibers that have experienced the manufacturing process without defects or breaks, as they reported in NatureField

Having placed silicon inside silicon and Germany in aluminosilicate glass, the researchers produced continuous fibers about 100 meters long. Then they captured the glass cladding, heated and stretched out the fibers again, this time investing semiconductor nuclei in polycarbonate plastic. “The fibers are very flexible,” says Wei, so they can be knitted or weaved with fabrics such as cotton, wool or silk, into “functional textiles”. Researchers produced a prototype fabric, which was about a meter wide and 10 meters. The fibers worked under water and survived other tests for durability and compression.

Xioating JiaWhich leads the research group on intellectual fibers and wearable devices in Virginia Tech, says this work will lay the way for a larger production of semiconductor fibers based on silicon or Germany. According to her, the inclusion of the polymer layer adds flexibility and isolation and protects the fiber when it is woven or knitted into the fabric. “This becomes a very reliable and scalable process,” adds Jia, who was not involved in the study, but coasted accompanying comment About research c NatureField

Potential applications include optical technology, such as a light hat. Formal data on fibers are submitted to a small interface fee in the interior of the hat. This fee communicates with the application, which makes the owner’s smartphone vibrate on the same way to indicate when traffic lights became red or green.

Another prototype created by the command is a sweater that includes silicon optoelectronic fibers. Clothing receives and sends data using the relationship of world (LI-Fi). In the study, the information, in this case, the photograph of the building was converted into a binary code and transmitted by the sweater as pulses of light. Researchers also demonstrated a flexible watch strip that controls the heart rate.

Tan nho beforeAn expert on soft robotics and functional materials, which leads the laboratory of medical robotics at the University of New South Wales in Australia and did not participate in the study, says that the new equipment creates semiconductor fibers that are strong enough to be woven by hand or machine, and is suitable for large -scale production. “He can discover new opportunities for integrating more functions,” he says, such as sensors that find pressure or temperature or control for soft robots.

According to Vey, new results can be directed by researchers in choosing materials and designing structures for more complex semiconductor fibers made from other elements. At the moment, his team has retained its structures simple, but the future textiles can double as more complex devices. One current project includes an attempt to turn fibers into transistors: a necessary step to the ability to sobs a computing device. Although the first prototypes are limited by sensors, Vey is optimistic that a wearable computer may appear in the future.

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