Project description
Disruptive technology for smart, flexible fibres
The market opportunity for smart fabrics has great potential. However, it remains untapped mainly because of production methods and strategies concerning functionalities. The EU-funded SENFLEX project will develop prototypes where the functionalities of smart fabrics are derived from fibres themselves. It will assess the technology’s commercial feasibility and examine the market and scalability for several important applications. It will also deliver a business plan outlining a go-to-market strategy, the business potential and product development approach. The fibres will be easy to fabricate in large amounts and could be integrated into a broad selection of fabrics. The project should lay the groundwork for cost-efficient smart fabrics that have advanced functionalities.
Objective
"Smart fabrics remain a promising market opportunity, however one that has not lived up to its potential yet. One of the key issues with current smart fabrics lies in the production methods and the strategy to impart functionalities. These rely on the integration of meshes of rigid electronics, or arrays of conductive yarns on soft mats or tissues. This heavily affects the fabrication and connection, costs, robustness and user’s experience of current smart fabrics.
The SENFLEX project proposes a disruptive solution where the functionalities of smart fabrics come from fibers themselves. During his ERC Starting grant project ""FLOWTONICS"", the PI demonstrated that some thermoplastic elastomers could be co-drawn with other materials such as liquid metals, polymer nanocomposites or optical materials, into long functional fibers. He and his team could in particular develop truly smart and flexible fibers called SenFlex, that can be elastically deformed and sense the imposed mechanical constraints in unprecedented ways. SenFlex fibers are simple to fabricate at large scale and can be integrated in a variety of fabrics. They can also be imparted with novel robust and truly distributed sensing designs that require little electrical connections and exhibit low power consumption, paving the way towards smart fabrics with advanced functionalities at drastically reduced costs.
In the SENFLEX project, we will assess the commercial feasibility of SenFlex fibers that have the potential to disrupt the € 5 billion smart fabrics market. We will investigate the market and scalability of our technology for several key applications. Our final deliverables are large-scale prototypes with proven industrial scalability and a business plan that describes our go-to-market strategy, business potential and product development approach. The prototypes and business plan will be used to convince strategic partners and investors for the next step towards commercialization.
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Fields of science
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
ERC-POC - Proof of Concept GrantHost institution
1015 Lausanne
Switzerland