New LED Light Emitting Fabric

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Travel Gizmo: Philips Research Debuts LED Light Emitting Fabric

http://www.travelgizmo.com/archives/2005/08/31/philips-research-led-fabric.html

Philips Research Debuts LED Light Emitting Fabric: Philips Research will be showing of prototypes of its photonic fabric at the upcoming Internationale Funkausstellung 2005 in Berlin. Philip researchers have managed to incorporate multicolored LEDs into fabric. Philips executives indicated one application of the "SMS Fabric" would enable someone to send a message with their cell phone and have the text or image show up on the fabric.
Just think of the customisation possibilities here.

The new fabric could be integrated into T-Shirts, backpacks, pillows, and the list goes on.

The LED substrates are also capable of displaying Windows Media Player-style visualisations and feature responsive sensors so that the patterns of diffused light displayed can change according to how they are handled.

Wow. Looks really neat. How would you wash it though?

Doesn't look like you just throw it in the washer...maybe you clean it with some kind of non-aqueous solvent.

The_LED_Museum said:

Doesn't look like you just throw it in the washer...maybe you clean it with some kind of non-aqueous solvent.

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Yeah, maybe. I wonder if this rules out dry cleaning also.

Anyway I can't wait to get my hands on a sample of this stuff.

PhotonWrangler said:

Wow. Looks really neat. How would you wash it though?

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Carefully! ;-)

WoW!
Perhaps high definition TV Tshirts,
Frame it in an art exhibit frame on the wall and grab the remote.
Theater screens are fabric right?
Yup, a theater screen without a projector.
Computer screens made of this might could also be done.

PhotonWrangler said:

Wow. Looks really neat. How would you wash it though?

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Just put the washing machine on a "light" setting.

LowBat said:

Just put the washing machine on a "light" setting.

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I can see it now... wearable billboards. get a big guy and rent out his backside to an ad agency.

Lynx_Arc said:

I can see it now... wearable billboards. get a big guy and rent out his backside to an ad agency.

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Probably not. People not only buy but tend to pay extra for clothes with brand names on them.

Chances are they'd sell the programmable shirt for $50.00 and charge $150.00 for the one that sold Ferraris

People sell forehead space for advertising on ebay too..

Make it with UV LEDs and you've got self cleaning, self sterilizing cloth.

That could be useful in lots of places like hospitals, furniture fabric in common areas etc.

Of course, others will just wear it as a shirt to get a tan...

WOW! even better than the LED based fober optic jackets I saw years ago.

I had envisioned fiber optic clothes simply using FOLED (Flexible Organic LED) panels sewn onto the material, but this would be even better!

LowBat said:

Just put the washing machine on a "light" setting.

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Arrrrgggghhhh!

EricB said:

WOW! even better than the LED based fober optic jackets I saw years ago.

I had envisioned fiber optic clothes simply using FOLED (Flexible Organic LED) panels sewn onto the material, but this would be even better!

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Hmm, I think the FOLEDs would hold up better. These are still individual surface-mount LEDs soldered to flexible printed circuit material. The solder joints themselves are not particularly flexible and I can easily envision individual LEDs popping off after a certain amount of repetitive flexing. FOLEDS aren't immune from this either, but I think the mechanical stresses will be distributed more evenly across FOLED panels than the LED fabrics and thus would be less likely to cause individual solder joint failures.

My 2 cents (and ya get what ya pay for)

The OLED's are not surface mount units, but rather organic polymers "printed" onto the flexible substrate. I don't even think any soldering in it, other than the wires from the power source.
Or were you talking about the new fabric. This at first sounded to me like the individual strands of fabric themselves are the LED's, so thus, not "surface mount" either. But looking at it again, perhaps "incorporate multicolored LEDs into fabric" is the surface mounting you describe. Yeah; I imagine that they would be popping off, as well as the circuitry and soldering becoming damaged. (It probably would feel more "prickly", then, too! In which case you might as well have the fiber optic And you're probably right that the FOLED might be better.).

EricB said:

The OLED's are not surface mount units, but rather organic polymers "printed" onto the flexible substrate. I don't even think any soldering in it, other than the wires from the power source.
Or were you talking about the new fabric. This at first sounded to me like the individual strands of fabric themselves are the LED's, so thus, not "surface mount" either. But looking at it again, perhaps "incorporate multicolored LEDs into fabric" is the surface mounting you describe. Yeah; I imagine that they would be popping off, as well as the circuitry and soldering becoming damaged. (It probably would feel more "prickly", then, too! In which case you might as well have the fiber optic And you're probably right that the FOLED might be better.).

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I was referring to the fabric, not OLEDs. Yes, they'd be prickly indeed! A flexible OLED panel would be much more suitable for an application that's incorporated into clothing.