In Air Actuating Textiles and Versatile Integration—Textiles in Actuation, Actuators in Textiles

Soft materials are by definition showing modulus matching with biological tissue. The by far most used technical soft material is textile with a large number of parameter overlap between these abiotic and the biotic materials. Thus, textile is potentially an interesting realm for soft electronics, including actuation.<br/><br/>We discuss a number of fundamental characteristics of textiles that are of relevance for actuation. Textile fabric making and other textile processes are inherently an additive manufacturing technology built upon the defining building blocks of any textiles, which are yarns.<br/><br/>We show how different functionalization of individual yarns facilitates the creation of complex patterns in both parallel and serial arrangement and how textile processes such as weaving can be adopted to actuating yarns, that behaves differently compared to standard yarns. This, in turn, enables making actuating devices directly in the loom. Except for minimizing post-processing and enable efficient production of actuators, this also opens up an interesting route for creating metamaterials.<br/><br/>Textiles, being polymer-based are shown compatible with the actuation mechanism given by electroactive polymers. By this the vision of all-polymeric-devices can be given support. We show how polymerbased in-air actuating yarns can be manufactured and how textile assembly strategies can amplify forces. By employing textile processes for actuation and introducing actuation for textile community, a novel scientific, technological and industrial field emerge.