I-Corps: Photonic Fiber Barcodes for Integrated Textile Traceability and Sorting

这个I-Corps项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力是为纺织品、鞋类和其他产品开发一个不可磨灭的标签系统。所提议的技术的目标是支持身份验证、制造生命周期跟踪，并在生命周期结束时提高重用、维修或回收的分类效率。尽管最近的一项研究表明，74%的低价值、消费后纺织品很容易用于纤维对纤维的回收，但目前超过85%的纺织品最终被填埋，预计到2028年，回收纺织品的市场规模将达到100亿美元。实现纤维对纤维回收的一个关键挑战是原料的模糊性。超过29%的消费后服装缺乏清晰的护理标签，而41%的标签不准确。为了实现国内和全球纺织品的功能性循环经济，以及相关的积极社会影响，需要一个功能强大的标签和追踪系统。除了由于缺乏报废管理而产生的纺织废物问题之外，还有非法进口假冒商品的挑战，据估计，假冒商品每年给美国员工造成336亿美元的工资和福利损失，并造成72亿美元的税收损失。这个I-Corps项目的基础是开发一种全有机、可回收的纤维，在制造过程中直接集成到织物或服装中，这种纤维具有工程光子特征，可以提供不可磨灭的标签。所提出的技术可在销售点和回收设施使用手持和高通量光学分类系统。在服装行业，产品生命周期管理受到阻碍，部分原因是标准护理标签不准确，可读性差，可拆卸。相反，该项目寻求使标签系统能够集成到织物本身，本质上是可回收的，低成本的，编码信息，并允许在正常使用多年后快速读取。在这项工作中，全聚合物光子晶体被设计并通过热拉伸制成100层，具有亚微米厚度和低折射率对比度，能够在可见光和红外波长产生独特的光学特征。光纤的光学设计还允许使用泛音峰值，以避免与寄生分子吸收重叠，从而大大提高了读出的信噪比（因此，简化和速度）。生产与现有纺织制造工艺兼容的长达数公里的纤维的能力，加上低投入材料成本，使拟议的技术成为对标准护理标签的潜在市场可行的改进。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is the development of an indelible labelling system for textiles, footwear, and other products. The goal of the proposed technology is to enable authentication, manufacturing life cycle tracing, and enhance sorting efficiency for reuse, repair, or recycling at the end-of-life. Over 85% of textiles currently end up in landfills, despite a recent study indicating 74% of low-value, post-consumer textiles are readily available for fiber-to-fiber recycling and the expected market for recycled textiles to be $10 billion by 2028. A key challenge in implementing fiber-to-fiber recycling is feedstock ambiguity. Over 29% of post-consumer clothing lacks a legible care label, while 41% have inaccurate labels. To realize a functional circular economy for textiles domestically and worldwide, and the associated positive social impacts, a functional, robust labeling and tracing system is required. In addition to the issue of textile waste created by lack of end-of-life management, there also is the challenge of illegal import of counterfeit goods, which is estimated to cost $33.6 billion in wages and benefits to employees in the US, and $7.2 billion in lost tax revenue every year. This I-Corps project is based on the development of an all-organic, recyclable fiber directly integrated into a fabric or garment during manufacture that has an engineered photonic signature to provide an indelible label. The proposed technology is readable using both hand-held and high-throughput optical sorting systems at point-of-sale and recycling facilities. In the apparel industry, product life cycle management is hampered, in part, by inaccurate, poorly readable, and detachable standard care labels. Instead, this project seeks to enable a labeling system capable of being integrated into the fabric itself, that is intrinsically recyclable, low-cost, encodes information, and allows rapid readout after years of normal use. In this work, all-polymer photonic crystals are designed and then fabricated by thermal drawing with 100 layers having sub-micrometer individual thickness and low refractive index contrast, enabling the creation of unique optical signatures at visible and infrared wavelengths. The fibers’ optical design also enables the use of overtone peaks to avoid overlap with parasitic molecular absorption, substantially improving the signal-to-noise ratio (and, therefore, ease and speed) of readout. The ability to produce kilometers of fiber that are compatible with existing textile manufacturing processes, coupled with low input material cost, make the proposed technology a potential market-viable improvement over the standard care label.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.