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Details of Grant 

EPSRC Reference: EP/T005106/1
Title: WEAVeING: Wearable Advanced fibre-based Electronics Integrated Manufacturing
Principal Investigator: Torrisi, Dr F
Other Investigators:
Researcher Co-Investigators:
Project Partners:
Department: Chemistry
Organisation: Imperial College London
Scheme: Standard Research - NR1
Starts: 21 October 2019 Ends: 20 October 2021 Value (£): 226,160
EPSRC Research Topic Classifications:
Manufacturing Machine & Plant
EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications:
Manufacturing
Related Grants:
Panel History:  
Summary on Grant Application Form
Wearable electronics are at the core of academic and industrial research and development as they present a market opportunity in excess of $53 billion in the RCUK strategic areas of healthcare and wellbeing, energy. This technology promises to play a key role in enabling the Internet of Things and integrated electronic systems, such as the Body Area Network concept. Wearable electronics currently relies on rigid and flexible electronic technologies which offer limited skin-compatibility in many circumstances, suffer washing and are uncomfortable to wear because they are not breathable. Turning textiles into electronic components will address these issues, by unlocking ultimately wearable electronics potential through electronic textiles. Work is already underway to have breathable, washable and skin-compatible electronic textiles. However, progress towards wearable all-textile electronic devices and integrated systems has been held back by the absence of circuit design rules and textile integration processes for fibre-based components, which challenges the large-scale manufacturing of integrated textile circuits. Despite individual device demonstration, both integration processes lack from figures of merit and design rules, which consider electronics on a textile form factor and allow linking the physical properties of fibre-based components with the final device performances. This has been key in the establishment and standardisation of planar silicon-based electronics as we know it, and represents a fundamental enabling step for the large-scale implementation of wearable electronic textiles. Without design rules and integration processes, it is extremely difficult to develop competitive wearable devices suitable for commercialisation.

WEAVeING will pioneer the innovative manufacturing tools to enable wearable electronic textile integrated systems by developing electronic textile design and large-scale integration processes for washable, breathable and skin-compatible fibre-based electronic components.

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Organisation Website: http://www.imperial.ac.uk