Researchers have showcased the world’s first touchscreen built into a garment. The team from the National University of Singapore’s College of Design and Engineering (CDE) have developed a fibre that functions as pixels and senses touch at the same time, integrating 54 of them into a sleeve to create the world’s first touchscreen built into a garment.
“What made this possible was our ability to construct the GUI system from electronic building blocks in fibre form — similar to traditional yarn, but with the sophisticated electronic functionality built directly into the fibres,” said Asst Prof Khudiyev.
Sleeve displays images and video, responds to finger presses
The team revealed that the sleeve displays images and video, responds to finger presses and connects wirelessly to other devices, yet stays as washable, breathable and flexible as ordinary clothing. The team’s invention enables the creation of garments that act as a direct interface to a wearer’s health data and their digital devices, with no rigid screen involved.
Full-colour, touch-sensitive display
The screens that people are familiar with, such as those on phones and laptops, typically present graphical user interfaces (GUIs) on flat, rigid panels that display information and enable interaction. Textiles, woven from one-dimensional fibres, have never matched this capability. A full-colour, touch-sensitive display that can be threaded like yarn was, until now, out of reach, according to researchers.
To build a fibre-enabled garment display, the NUS team developed a programmable method that creates connection points along tiny, insulated wires exactly where each microchip needs them. A laser exposes these locations, while controlled surface wetting guides molten solder to bond only at the programmed points. This enabled the team to integrate more than 5,000 chips through over 20,000 electrical connections.
The strip of interconnected digital LEDs was then integrated into a multilayer fibre using a thermal drawing approach, which allows precise formation of the touch-sensitive and pixel layers within a thread just a millimetre thick and 10 metres long. A layer beneath the LEDs senses touch — pressing the fibre completes a circuit, and the signal reveals exactly where your finger landed so the nearest pixel lights up.
“A fibre has a one-dimensional, axially symmetric geometry, which makes it difficult to build complex circuitry using approaches developed for conventional two-dimensional electronics,” added Asst Prof Khudiyev.
“We overcame this limitation through a new interconnection architecture, which enables thousands of microelectronic devices to be integrated and interconnected along a fibre.”
Researchers also revealed that in their prototype, 54 pixel fibres, each carrying 96 LEDs, were threaded into the forearm of a sleeve to form a 96 by 54-pixel display measuring 168 mm by 105 mm, refreshing 30 frames per second with 8-bit colour depth. Each fibre has its own control channel, so a fault in one line leaves its neighbours working normally, and the system can register several touches at once. Alongside the pixel fibres, the team integrated peripheral fibres made the same way, carrying a microphone, a speaker and sensors that track movement, find magnetic north, measure temperature and gauge how bright the surroundings are, according to a press release.