Tag Archives: Ben Bin Xu

Red wine for making wearable electronics?

Courtesy: University of Manchester [1920_stock-photo-red-wine-pouring-58843885-927462.jpg]

A July 12, 2019 news item on Nanowerk may change how you view that glass of red wine,

A team of scientists are seeking to kick-start a wearable technology revolution by creating flexible fibres and adding acids from red wine.

Extracting tannic acid from red wine, coffee or black tea, led a team of scientists from The University of Manchester to develop much more durable and flexible wearable devices. The addition of tannins improved mechanical properties of materials such as cotton to develop wearable sensors for rehabilitation monitoring, drastically increasing the devices lifespan.

A July 11, 2019 University of Manchester press release, which originated the news item, describes how this new approach could affect the scientists’ previous work,

The team have developed wearable devices such as capacitive breath sensors and artificial hands for extreme conditions by improving the durability of flexible sensors. Previously, wearable technology has been subject to fail after repeated bending and folding which can interrupt the conductivity of such devices due to tiny micro cracks. Improving this could open the door to more long-lasting integrated technology.

Dr Xuqing Liu who led the research team said: “We are using this method to develop new flexible, breathable, wearable devices. The main research objective of our group is to develop comfortable wearable devices for flexible human-machine interface.

“Traditional conductive material suffers from weak bonding to the fibers which can result in low conductivity. When red wine, or coffee, or black tea, is spilled on a dress, it’s difficult to get rid of these stains. The main reason is that they all contain tannic acid, which can firmly adsorb the material on the surface of the fiber. This good adhesion is exactly what we need for durable wearable, conductive devices.”

The new research published in the journal Small demonstrated that without this layer of tannic acid, the conductivity is several hundred times, or even thousands of times, less than traditional conductive material samples as the conductive coating becomes easily detached from the textile surface through repeated bending and flexing.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

A Nature‐Inspired, Flexible Substrate Strategy for Future Wearable Electronics by Chuang Zhu, Evelyn Chalmers, Liming Chen, Yuqi Wang, Ben Bin Xu, Yi Li, Xuqing Liu. Small Online Version of Record before inclusion in an issue 1902440 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/smll.201902440 First published: 19 June 2019

This paper is behind a paywall.