We sat down and spoke to Prof. Steve Beeby, Project Lead for SUSTAIN to discuss why the Programme Grant is so important to the future of E-Textiles.
Can you tell us about your role within the SUSTAIN Programme Grant?
I’m the Project Lead for SUSTAIN which means I’m overseeing the grant or the programme as a whole. I’m also leading work package one, but I chair all of the management meetings and lead the project as a whole.
How would you explain SUSTAIN to someone who has never heard of smart textiles or e-textiles before?
So, the first thing to do is to define smart textiles or e-textiles, and that is simply it’s the combination of a normal fabric or a textile or item of clothing and combining that with electronic functionality. That could be for the purpose of sensing something, for example, sensing how you move, sensing your heart rate or some other parameters and embedding that electronic functionality, that sensing and the electronics around it invisibly within the textile. The SUSTAIN project is coming at this from the point of tackling fundamental challenges that are holding the technology back. These are around the reliability of interconnects and wires, which are always a point of failure. And also trying to reduce the reliance on conventional batteries. So, the project is looking at wireless technologies for supplying power and communicating, and also self-powered sensors, for example, that don’t require power supplies to operate. Three other aspects that underpin everything we do technically, is the focus on sustainability, thinking about how we would ultimately manufacture the solutions and the involvement of textile and garment design in the research process. So, it’s a really big project covering lots of aspects of e-textiles.
What impact do you hope SUSTAIN will have in the next decade?
So, I really hope the project will influence how the e-textile community approaches developing products and also how they go about their research, and that they think about and have available a range of sustainable material choices and processes that actually mean the technology has a lower environmental footprint than it otherwise would have at the moment. And I hope the demonstrators that we produce in the programme will really show the technology off in a new light and spark the imagination of other people such that we can see a new generation of commercial products.
And finally, what aspect of SUSTAIN excites you the most personally?
All of it! Yeah, that’s a great question. I mean, I do find every aspect of the project really, really interesting and important. I guess if there was one thing, I really like the idea of just turning textiles into a battery. And if we could do that in a way that was practical and imperceptible, had a minimal effect on the fabric, that would be really, really cool. So, your fabric was your battery, etc, and that would work for a whole range of wearables, not just e-textiles. But I also think I’m really excited by the sustainability angle of the project. I think that’s really important for the technology and I’m really pleased that we’ve put that at the heart of the project.
SUSTAIN 