Recently gaining a great deal of attention, wearable smart devices are rapidly being integrated into consumer products spanning a wide range of product areas, such as conductive clothing, strain sensors and body heaters for thermotherapy. Smart textiles are textile materials that can sense and react in a premeditated way to external catalysts, such as mechanical, thermal, magnetic, chemical and electrical stimulus, to provide a product with enhanced functionality [1]. To deal with electrical signals, e-textiles should be acquired in which conductivity must be added to connect the electronics together and form a circuit, thus creating an intelligence.

To meet consumer requirements, wearable smart devices should be highly conductive, mechanically flexible, wearable and light weight. However, due to metallic components, such as integrated circuits and semiconductors, conventional smart devices have lacked flexibility and wearability [1]. Contemporary wearable electronics have been accomplished by attaching electronic devices to textiles, creating wearable electronics that are rigid and therefore susceptive to malfunctioning. The challenges associated with wearable electronics have made way for a great deal of research to develop wearable smart textiles that enable seamless incorporation of intelligent properties to textiles via a multitude of conductive materials.

Graphene is a single-atom-thick sheet of carbon atoms that has remarkable intrinsic properties, such as very high tensile strength, excellent thermal and electrical conductivity, as well as high flexibility, elasticity and light weight. It has great potential to be used as a component in wearable technology, although integrating graphene into textile materials is still a challenge.

In this product innovation profile, WTiN reports on a research outcome from the University of Exeter’s Centre for Graphene Science and College of Engineering, aimed at a new technique compatible with mass scale production, to develop electronic graphene fibres that can be seamlessly incorporated within the fabric. This creates the potential for affordable, durable and mass-produced smart textiles that allow images to be displayed directly onto the fabric surface [2].