DCU - UoW Scientists lead US Materials Research Society Workshop on Electronic Textiles
Tuesday 9 May

Professor Gordon Wallace and Professor Dermot Diamond

On 17th April 2006, Professor Dermot Diamond and Professor Gordon Wallace led a US Workshop on Electronic Textiles – focusing on the integration of sensing and actuating technologies into textile structures.

The fully booked workshop was attended by more than 50 delegate representatives, industry and research organisations from around the world.

Following an introduction to the emerging areas of novel organic conductor materials, electronics and interconnects for electronic textiles a range of demonstrations were displayed. The demonstrations included:

• The Intelligent Knee Sleeve
• The Sensor Glove
• Polymer based Artificial Muscles
• The Smart Shoe
• The Bender Sensors

Presentations were given by Prof. Diamond, Prof. Wallace and Dr. Shirley Coyle, from DCU’s Adaptive Information Cluster (www.adaptiveinformation.ie). The demonstrations were organised and managed by Richard Wu from IPRI, Wollongong (http://www.uow.edu.au/science/research/ipri/people/students2004.html#Richard) assisted by Dr. Coyle. This is the second workshop that the team has given in this area, the first being at the Body Sensor Network Conference (MIT, Boston) two weeks previously (http://bsn.media.mit.edu/). The concept of augmenting the behaviour of conventional materials through molecular functionalisation is now generating huge interest internationally, as this can lead to materials that whose properties (colour, density, water repellency, chemical activity, permeability etc.) can be controlled using external optical or electrochemical signals.