Smart fabrics, also known as smart textiles, smart garments, or smart clothing, are a type of fabric in which electronic devices such as integrated circuits, batteries, conductors, LEDs, and others are embedded to offer an added value to the wearer. Smart textiles can sense and respond to environmental stimuli, including chemical, biological, mechanical, thermal, and magnetic, among others. Thus, smart fabrics are widely used in healthcare, military and defense, fashion and entertainment, architecture, and transportation.
Smart fabrics are made from
various materials such as Kevlar, cotton, nylon, and polyester, among others.
Smart textiles can both perceive or communicate the environmental conditions
and can detect and process the wearer's condition. Smart fabrics are
manufactured to include technologies that provide the wearer with increased
functionality. Smart fabrics are widely used in the healthcare industry and military
and defense. Such fabric
is making clinical trials patient-friendly while providing more precise,
real-time data to healthcare professionals.
In the coming future, doctors
may recommend smart fabrics to monitor for vital signs and more.
Moreover, textile-based materials equipped with
electronics and nanotechnology play a vital role in the development of
technologically advanced military materials and uniforms. Active intelligent textile systems, integrated with
electronics, can help improve the soldier’s performance by sensing, adapting,
and responding to a situational combat need allowing the combat soldiers to
continue their mission. They are used to
enhance military functionality. The Smart
Fabrics market in the U.S. is
estimated at US$598.5 Million in the year
2021.
For example, in June 2021,
the U.S. Army and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) developed a
technology to bring human troops one step closer; smart clothing fibers that
can transform army uniforms into wearable computers. A fiber can sense, analyze, store, and infer activity
when sewn into a piece of clothing. Moreover, the fibers can warn human troops of
dangers ahead, such as chemical weapons attacks, and mark the wearer's
location.