Stretchable Textile Electronics with Printing (STEP)

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Electronic textiles (e-textiles) has been seen in movies for decades, from Marty McFly's self-drying jacket in Back to the Future (1989) to the more recent wearable haptic suits in Ready Player One (2018). The reason many of these devices are science fiction and not science fact is that there are still many engineering issues which need to be solved when moving electronics onto textile. Textile Two Dimensional aims to solve these issues through innovating the materials and technology which is currently used to build electronic textiles. To make the e-textile, electronic inks will be formulated and then printed onto textile surfaces using scalable printing techniques such as inkjet printing or roll-to-roll printing. The material we will use to make the electronic ink is known as graphene, a honeycomb arrangement of carbon atoms which is a single atom thick. The advance of using graphene over traditional metals is that it that it is more sustainable, lighter, flexible and potentially much lower cost. However another key parameter of building electronics on textile is the strechability of the electrical components with the textile fibres. Textile Two Dimensional will partner with the National Physical Laboratory to improve the strechability of electronic inks. The National Physical Laboratory will help to develop new national measurement standards for the strechability of wearable devices while also helping to solve key issues related to the fracturing of electronic components on textile through experimental measurement and analysis.