To have textiles change with time or to display a changing image, a thin conventional display can be fixed to it. Most displays are rigid, heavy, expensive and come with a collection of paraphernalia required to produce the image. This makes them uncomfortable to wear as clothing and awkward for most other uses of textile where the feel and texture is important.

Flexible displays can bend with the textiles. They would probably be made of plastic and would be lighter, making clothing with attached displays more wearable. Because they are flexible, it should be possible to make them using a roll to roll process thereby reducing the manufacturing cost. If the display components can be coated onto a flexible support, the coating could be made directly onto the textiles to make the material the display itself.

A step further than this, would be to incorporate the imaging means into the textile weave; the fibres could be made conducting to drive current, other fibres could respond to the electrical signals by changing hue or emitting coloured light. Modern techniques of making flexible semiconductors could also be incorporated allowing some of the image processing to be carried out in the cloth. These material would not only have to have the desired image forming properties, but would need to be robust to wear and to cleaning.

The ultimate goal could be to incorporate not only the display into the textile, but also all the drive electronics as well, incorporating all the components into the textile structure.

John Fyson
Kodak European Research
Cambridge