Towards Green, Mass Customization of Electronic Fabrics

Traditional textile production has established fabrication processes of pre-treatment, dyeing, and finishing to obtain desired textile appearances and functionalities. Even though electronic textiles exhibit substantially enhanced functionalities than traditional textiles, their processing methods remain largely like those of traditional textiles, which include dip-coating, spraying, electrodeposition, or the use of coagulation bath. However, these processes often consume vast amount of water and energy, while producing significant amounts of chemical wastes. Here, we propose the integration of fibre spinning and 3D printing, which allows electrical functionalities to be embedded into/onto the microfibre structures on-demand. Tuning the spinning and print path of microfibres could generate customized patterns of e-fabrics. Such an on-demand, scalable method is foreseen to significantly reduce the chemical and material usage for e-fabric creation, as well as minimizing resultant waste generation.