Exploiting collective effects of multiple optoelectronic devices integrated in a single fiber

Fibres-threads of intelligence-enable a new generation of wearable systems

Fabrics represent a unique platform for seamlessly integrating electronics into everyday experiences. The advancements in functionalizing fabrics at both the single fibre level and within constructed fabrics have fundamentally altered their utility. The revolution in materials, structures, and functionality at the fibre level enables intimate and imperceptible integration, rapidly transforming fibres and fabrics into next-generation wearable devices and systems. In this review, we explore recent scientific and technological breakthroughs in smart fibre-enabled fabrics. We examine common challenges and bottlenecks in fibre materials, physics, chemistry, fabrication strategies, and applications that shape the future of wearable electronics. We propose a closed-loop smart fibre-enabled fabric ecosystem encompassing proactive sensing, interactive communication, data storage and processing, real-time feedback, and energy storage and harvesting, intended to tackle significant challenges in wearable technology. Finally, we envision computing fabrics as sophisticated wearable platforms with system-level attributes for data management, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and closed-loop intelligent networks.

Semiconductor Multimaterial Optical Fibers for Biomedical Applications

Integrated sensors and transmitters of a wide variety of human physiological indicators have recently emerged in the form of multimaterial optical fibers. The methods utilized in the manufacture of optical fibers facilitate the use of a wide range of functional elements in microscale optical fibers with an extensive variety of structures. This article presents an overview and review of semiconductor multimaterial optical fibers, their fabrication and postprocessing techniques, different geometries, and integration in devices that can be further utilized in biomedical applications. Semiconductor optical fiber sensors and fiber lasers for body temperature regulation, in vivo detection, volatile organic compound detection, and medical surgery will be discussed.

A 'Moore's law' for fibers enables intelligent fabrics

Fabrics are an indispensable part of our everyday life. They provide us with protection, offer privacy and form an intimate expression of ourselves through their esthetics. Imparting functionality at the fiber level represents an intriguing path toward innovative fabrics with a hitherto unparalleled functionality and value. The fiber technology based on thermal drawing of a preform, which is identical in its materials and geometry to the final fiber, has emerged as a powerful platform for the production of exquisite fibers with prerequisite composition, geometric complexity and control over feature size. A 'Moore's law' for fibers is emerging, delivering higher forms of function that are important for a broad spectrum of practical applications in healthcare, sports, robotics, space exploration, etc. In this review, we survey progress in thermally drawn fibers and devices, and discuss their relevance to 'smart' fabrics. A new generation of fabrics that can see, hear and speak, sense, communicate, harvest and store energy, as well as store and process data is anticipated. We conclude with a critical analysis of existing challenges and opportunities currently faced by thermally drawn fibers and fabrics that are expected to become sophisticated platforms delivering value-added services for our society.

Fiber-Based Sensors and Energy Systems for Wearable Electronics

Wearable electronics have been receiving increasing attention for the past few decades. Particularly, fiber-based electronics are considered to be ideal for many applications for their flexibility, lightweight, breathability, and comfortability. Furthermore, fibers and fiber-based textiles can be 3D-molded with ease and potentially integrated with everyday clothes or accessories. These properties are especially desired in the fields of bio-related sensors and energy-storage systems. Wearable sensors utilize a tight interface with human skin and clothes for continuous environmental scanning and non-invasive health monitoring. At the same time, their flexible and lightweight properties allow more convenient and user-friendly experiences to the wearers. Similarly, for the wearable devices to be more accessible, it is crucial to incorporate energy harvesting and storage systems into the device themselves, removing the need to attach an external power source. This review summarizes the recent applications of fibers and fiber-based textiles in mechanical, photonic, and biomedical sensors. Pressure and strain sensors and their implementation as electronic skins will be explored, along with other various fiber sensors capable of imaging objects or monitoring safety and health markers. In addition, we attempt to elucidate recent studies in energy-storing fibers and their implication in self-powered and fully wireless wearable devices.

Recent Progress and Perspectives of Thermally Drawn Multimaterial Fiber Electronics

Fibers are the building blocks of a broad spectrum of products from textiles to composites, and waveguides to wound dressings. While ubiquitous, the capabilities of fibers have not rapidly increased compared to semiconductor chip technology, for example. Recognizing that fibers lack the composition, geometry, and feature sizes for more functions, exploration of the boundaries of fiber functionality began some years ago. The approach focuses on a particular form of fiber production, thermal-drawing from a preform. This process has been used for producing single material fibers, but by combining metals, insulators, and semiconductors all within a single strand of fiber, an entire world of functionality in fibers has emerged. Fibers with optical, electrical, acoustic, or optoelectronic functionalities can be produced at scale from relatively easy-to-assemble macroscopic preforms. Two significant opportunities now present themselves. First, can one expect that fiber functions escalate in a predictable manner, creating the context for a "Moore's Law" analog in fibers? Second, as fabrics occupy an enormous surface around the body, could fabrics offer a valuable service to augment the human body? Toward answering these questions, the materials, performance, and limitations of thermally drawn fibers in different electronic applications are detailed and their potential in new fields is envisioned.

Microstructured Fibers for the Production of Food

Food engineering faces the difficult challenge of combining taste, i.e., tailoring texture and rheology of food matrices with the balanced intake of healthy nutrients. In materials science, fiber suspensions and composites have been developed as a versatile and successful approach to tailor rheology while imparting materials with added functionalities. Structures based on such types of physical (micro)fibers are however rare in food production mainly due to a lack of food-grade materials and processes allowing for the fabrication of fibers with controlled sizes and microstructures. Here, the controlled fabrication of multi-material microstructured edible fibers is demonstrated using a food compatible process based on preform-to-fiber thermal drawing. It is shown that different material systems based on gelatin or casein, with plasticizers such as glycerol, can be thermally drawn into fibers with various geometries and cross-sectional structures. It is demonstrated that fibers can exhibit tailored mechanical properties post-drawing, and can encapsulate nutrients to control their release. The versatility of fiber materials is also exploited to demonstrate the fabrication of food-grade fabrics and scaffolds for food growth. The end results establish a new field in food production that relies on fiber-based simple and eco-friendly processes to realize enjoyable yet healthy and nutritious products.

Flexible fiber-based optoelectronics for neural interfaces

Neurological and psychiatric conditions pose an increasing socioeconomic burden on our aging society. Our ability to understand and treat these conditions relies on the development of reliable tools to study the dynamics of the underlying neural circuits. Despite significant progress in approaches and devices to sense and modulate neural activity, further refinement is required on the spatiotemporal resolution, cell-type selectivity, and long-term stability of neural interfaces. Guided by the principles of neural transduction and by the materials properties of the neural tissue, recent advances in neural interrogation approaches rely on flexible and multifunctional devices. Among these approaches, multimaterial fibers have emerged as integrated tools for sensing and delivering of multiple signals to and from the neural tissue. Fiber-based neural probes are produced by thermal drawing process, which is the manufacturing approach used in optical fiber fabrication. This technology allows straightforward incorporation of multiple functional components into microstructured fibers at the level of their macroscale models, preforms, with a wide range of geometries. Here we will introduce the multimaterial fiber technology, its applications in engineering fields, and its adoption for the design of multifunctional and flexible neural interfaces. We will discuss examples of fiber-based neural probes tailored to the electrophysiological recording, optical neuromodulation, and delivery of drugs and genes into the rodent brain and spinal cord, as well as their emerging use for studies of nerve growth and repair.

Advanced Multimaterial Electronic and Optoelectronic Fibers and Textiles

The ability to integrate complex electronic and optoelectronic functionalities within soft and thin fibers is one of today's key advanced manufacturing challenges. Multifunctional and connected fiber devices will be at the heart of the development of smart textiles and wearable devices. These devices also offer novel opportunities for surgical probes and tools, robotics and prostheses, communication systems, and portable energy harvesters. Among the various fiber-processing methods, the preform-to-fiber thermal drawing technique is a very promising process that is used to fabricate multimaterial fibers with complex architectures at micro- and nanoscale feature sizes. Recently, a series of scientific and technological breakthroughs have significantly advanced the field of multimaterial fibers, allowing a wider range of functionalities, better performance, and novel applications. Here, these breakthroughs, in the fundamental understanding of the fluid dynamics, rheology, and tailoring of materials microstructures at play in the thermal drawing process, are presented and critically discussed. The impact of these advances on the research landscape in this field and how they offer significant new opportunities for this rapidly growing scientific and technological platform are also discussed.

Semiconducting Nanowire-Based Optoelectronic Fibers

The recent ability to integrate semiconductor-based optoelectronic functionalities within thin fibers is opening intriguing opportunities for flexible electronics and advanced textiles. The scalable integration of high-quality semiconducting devices within functional fibers however remains a challenge. It is difficult with current strategies to combine high light absorption, good microstructure and efficient electrical contact. The growth of semiconducting nanowires is a great tool to control crystal orientation and ensure a combination of light absorption and charge extraction for efficient photodetection. Thus far, however, leveraging the attributes of nanowires has remained seemingly incompatible with fiber materials, geometry, and processing approaches. Here, the integration of semiconducting nanowire-based devices at the tip and along the length of polymer fibers is demonstrated for the first time. The scalable thermal drawing process is combined with a simple sonochemical treatment to grow nanowires out of electrically addressed amorphous selenium domains. First principles density-functional theory calculations show that this approach enables to tailor the surface energy of crystal facets and favors nanowire growth along a preferred orientation, resulting in fiber-integrated devices of unprecedented performance. This novel platform is exploited to demonstrate an all-fiber-integrated fluorescence imaging system, highlighting novel opportunities in sensing, advanced optical probes, and smart textiles.

Coherence measurements of scattered incoherent light for lensless identification of an object's location and size

In the absence of a lens to form an image, incoherent or partially coherent light scattering off an obstructive or reflective object forms a broad intensity distribution in the far field with only feeble spatial features. We show here that measuring the complex spatial coherence function can help in the identification of the size and location of a one-dimensional object placed in the path of a partially coherent light source. The complex coherence function is measured in the far field through wavefront sampling, which is performed via dynamically reconfigurable slits implemented on a digital micromirror device (DMD). The impact of an object - parameterized by size and location - that either intercepts or reflects incoherent light is studied. The experimental results show that measuring the spatial coherence function as a function of the separation between two slits located symmetrically around the optical axis can identify the object transverse location and angle subtended from the detection plane (the ratio of the object width to the axial distance from the detector). The measurements are in good agreement with numerical simulations of a forward model based on Fresnel propagators. The rapid refresh rate of DMDs may enable real-time operation of such a lensless coherency imaging scheme.

All-in-fiber chemical sensing

A new all-in-fiber trace-level chemical sensing approach is demonstrated. Photoconductive structures, embedded directly into the fiber cladding along its entire length, capture light emitted anywhere within the fiber's hollow core and transform it directly into an electrical signal. Localized signal transduction circumvents problems associated with conventional fiber-optics, including limited signal collection efficiency and optical losses. This approach facilitates a new platform for remote and distributed photosensing.

Light-emitting coaxial nanofibers

Ionic transition-metal complex (iTMCs)-based electro-luminescent nanofibers (TELFs) are developed by using coelectrospinning. A single TELF consists of a Galistan liquid metal core (cathode), an iTMC-based polymer shell, and an ITO thin film coating (anode). Lights emitted from the TELFs can be detected by a CCD camera at 4.2 V and seen by naked eyes at 5.6 V in nitrogen. The TELFs are structurally self-supporting but do not require a physical substrate (generally relatively bulky and heavy) to support them, rendering one-dimensional light sources more flexible, lightweight, and conformable. This technology can be beneficial to many research and development areas such as optoelectronic textile, bioimaging, chemical and biological sensing, high-resolution microscopy, and flexible panel displays, particularly as iTMCs with emission at different wavelengths are available.

Resolving optical illumination distributions along an axially symmetric photodetecting fiber

Photodetecting fibers of arbitrary length with internal metal, semiconductor and insulator domains have recently been demonstrated. These semiconductor devices exhibit a continuous translational symmetry which presents challenges to the extraction of spatially resolved information. Here, we overcome this seemingly fundamental limitation and achieve the detection and spatial localization of a single incident optical beam at sub-centimeter resolution, along a one-meter fiber section. Using an approach that breaks the axial symmetry through the constuction of a convex electrical potential along the fiber axis, we demonstrate the full reconstruction of an arbitrary rectangular optical wave profile. Finally, the localization of up to three points of illumination simultaneously incident on a photodetecting fiber is achieved.

Fiber field-effect device via in situ channel crystallization

The in situ crystallization of the incorporated amorphous semiconductor within the multimaterial fiber device yields a large decrease in defect density and a concomitant five-order-of-magnitude decrease in resistivity of the novel metal-insulator-crystalline semiconductor structure. Using a post-drawing crystallization process, the first tens-of-meters-long single-fiber field-effect device is demonstrated. This work opens significant opportunities for incorporating higher functionality in functional fibers and fabrics.