Flying needles and threads! Fibers that “weave” smart fashion

The 1990s was a boom period for Hong Kong's garment industry. When Hong Kong style dressing became popular in China, Tao Xiaoming returned from Australia and settled in this fashionable city where East and West meet. As a textile engineering major, her first topic was to combine optical fiber with textile composite materials, which immediately put her at the forefront. At that time, few people in the world were involved in this work. A few years later, she published the pioneering monographs "Smart Fiber Fabrics and Clothing" and "Wearable Electronic and Photonic Devices and Systems". With her delicate hands, she combined the traditional textile industry with high technology and high added value, making it full of vitality, and a brand new field of textile research was presented to the world.

In 2021, at the node of more than 20 years of development of smart textiles, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (hereinafter referred to as "PolyU"), in line with the spirit of "opening things to accomplish business", responded to the "market" and established the Institute of Intelligent Wearable Systems. As the dean, Tao Xiaoming will integrate the various materials, devices, technologies and theoretical achievements in the past, and on this basis, he will take a high-level view, starting from interdisciplinary system research, and is committed to creating an ideal platform for human-machine-environment interaction, embarking on a new journey of smart textile research.

Today, with the joint efforts of a team of more than 200 people from different disciplines such as physics, chemistry, materials, textiles and clothing, design, electronics, mechanical engineering, and rehabilitation medicine, three major research directions have been formed: intelligent wearable systems and their applications, intelligent wearable system integration and evaluation, and flexible functional materials and flexible devices. The relevant technologies and products can be widely used in personal protection, clinical medicine, public health and other fields.

▲Tao Xiaoming

In Tao Xiaoming's view, as an emerging disruptive technology, smart wearable technology will have a huge impact on traditional clothing and electronics industries. After turning 60, she set out again with the mission of iterating new industries and cultivating new talents. This woman who went from the famous capital of Huaizuo to the world is still as brave and calm as ever.

"From 0 to 1", integrating innovative thinking and ability into the blood

Looking back on her scientific research career, Tao Xiaoming embodies the spirit of perseverance. But she always modestly said: "I am very lucky to have the opportunity to continue to work in the field I love. It is my honor to see this field grow and become more valued by more and more people, and have an impact on the development of the world. Therefore, I have never changed my direction and have devoted myself to it."

In 1977, as one of the first batch of candidates after the resumption of the college entrance examination in mainland China, Tao Xiaoming studied textile engineering, which is closely related to the national economy and people's livelihood. When she was studying hard at the East China Institute of Textile Engineering (now Donghua University), my country's textile industry was also developing rapidly. From 1978 to 1982, in just four years, my country's total fiber processing volume increased from 2.76 million tons to 4 million tons. In this period when there was a huge demand for the productivity of the textile industry, the textile engineering major in the university naturally tended to be mechanical engineering applications, which laid a solid foundation for Tao Xiaoming in mechanical engineering.

After graduating from college, Tao Xiaoming was sponsored to study abroad in Australia. In the Department of Fiber Science and Technology at the University of New South Wales, she was exposed to another research direction - textile physics. The training in physics cultivated Tao Xiaoming's thinking method of "starting from the first scientific principles" and interdisciplinary research model. After obtaining her doctorate in 1987, Tao Xiaoming worked in the Wool Technology Institute of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization of Australia, China Textile University, and the Fiber Materials Research Center of Drexel University in the United States. After understanding the overall situation of the textile industry at home and abroad and experiencing the influence of both Chinese and Western cultures, she settled in Hong Kong and taught at PolyU.

At that time, with the transfer of industries, textile disciplines of world-class universities withdrew one after another. As a gradually declining industry, the textile industry is attracting fewer and fewer outstanding talents. Seeing this, Tao Xiaoming launched active attempts and explorations. In order to revitalize the traditional textile industry, she undertook a number of important projects, obtained a number of invention patents, and authorized more than ten invention technology patents to companies around the world for industrial production. Among them, the twist yarn spinning technology that took more than ten years to successfully develop is used by 12 yarn production companies around the world. From 2005 to 2013, it produced new textiles and clothing worth more than HK$10.5 billion. The fabrics produced using this technology not only have excellent performance, but also have no wastewater, waste gas and chemical reagent emissions during the production process, which is truly efficient, energy-saving and environmentally friendly.

In addition, Tao Xiaoming's rich scientific research experience also made her realize that textile research cannot be limited to solving existing industrial problems, but must have innovative thinking and innovative ability from "0 to 1", have an excellent scientific analysis foundation, and create and lead the frontier of the discipline. Therefore, based on her deep accumulation in the field of composite materials, she and Professor Yu Tongxi of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology jointly proposed the concept of multicellular textile composite materials, studied a variety of designed multicellular composite materials, and proposed a mechanical model of impact plastic deformation. In addition, facing the much-watched optical fiber with exponentially increased communication capacity and relay distance, she boldly combined it with textile composite materials to carry out research on intelligent optical fiber fabrics. Therefore, guided by the spirit of courage and innovation, she stepped into the field of intelligent textiles, which is still in its infancy. After that, she designed, produced, and analyzed multicellular woven composite materials with built-in fiber Bragg grating sensors; proposed the concept of photonic fibers and textile fabrics for the first time; pioneered "color-adjustable nanoluminescent cloth"; realized the research and development and industrial production of washable nano-coated fabric electronic sensors for the first time; and promoted the vigorous development of intelligent textiles worldwide.

As a pioneer and leader in smart textiles, Tao Xiaoming's greatest contribution is to combine a traditional industry like textiles with thriving high-tech and high-value-added industries, and to integrate basic industrial research with various cutting-edge technologies. He has reached new heights and new achievements in the field of smart textiles, and has led the industry into a new development milestone. Today, in world-class universities such as Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Cambridge University, research on smart textiles is flourishing. Having witnessed the field grow from a handful of researchers to tens of thousands of researchers, attracting a large number of outstanding young people to join, and from being unpopular to being popular, Tao Xiaoming, who is over 60 years old, feels infinitely relieved that "when the mountain flowers are in full bloom, she will smile in the bushes."

Assisting in achieving carbon neutrality and focusing on energy converter research

The research history of smart wearable systems around the world is not long. Before the emergence of smartphones, wearable devices had experienced decades of initial exploration in the field of audio and video entertainment. With the emergence of smartphones, they gradually clarified their own positioning and development path. Today, looking at the market, the four hottest smart wearable products are probably smart watches, bracelets, headphones, and glasses. Among these products, the most prominent functions are health monitoring and sports medical applications. The market trend just fits Tao Xiaoming's idea. The ultimate goal of her research on smart wearable systems is to "make humans healthier, safer, more convenient, and more powerful."

In the PolyU campus in Hung Hom Bay, brick-red buildings representing industry are scattered in an orderly manner, giving a vivid symbol of the pragmatic spirit of PolyU people. When you push open the door of the Intelligent Wearable System Research Institute, you will see a series of simple white human models, as if you are about to enter a fashion design institute. However, unlike general fashion design institutes, the clothes that the models try on here are, more accurately, high-tech products that integrate electronics, information, flexible machines, and artificial intelligence. For example, washable electronic yarns and fabric electronic systems, including full-color fabric displays, fabric multi-channel earpieces and speakers, multi-axis strain sensing fabrics, fabric keyboards and circuit boards; wearable respiratory monitoring systems; smart wearable systems to improve the mobility of Parkinson's patients; rapid motion fatigue recovery systems; neuromorphic visual sensors; high-precision rapid body fluid detection systems; real-time pressure distribution detection systems for human bodies during vehicle collisions; cancer patient treatment effect monitoring and analysis systems; wearable power supply devices... These products have common characteristics: one is the ability to perform multiple perception and execution functions in real time; two is high intelligence; three is sustainable energy supply and self-repair; four is supernatural communication ability; and five is suitable for various wearable requirements.

The intelligent system consists of sensors, drivers, control and communication modules, circuit boards and power supplies. Continuous and reliable power supply is one of the bottlenecks in the development of wearable systems. "Wearable products on the market now often use charging mode. This mode is fine for young people, but it is not reliable for children, the elderly and patients. Since 2015, our team has been committed to related energy conversion issues. Over the years, we have conducted research and exploration on various energy conversion principles and devices."

Among them, the wearable energy harvester, the ion gel wet gas generator, is a recent breakthrough of Tao Xiaoming in the field of converters. Relevant reports point out that wet gas generators are of great significance for achieving the goal of "carbon neutrality" and promoting the sustainable development of social green energy, finding and developing simple and efficient green energy conversion technologies, and can also meet the growing demand for electricity. Compared with other driving methods, it uses the energy in the atmospheric environment to directly generate electricity without deriving pollutants or emitting harmful gases. However, most of the current wet gas generators output intermittent electrical signals and low currents, which hinder the progress and practical application of ubiquitous water vapor spontaneous power generation. Therefore, it is still in the bottleneck period of research in achieving large-scale integration and application.

To break the limitation, Tao Xiaoming's team developed an efficient, flexible and all-weather ion gel wet gas generator. It can efficiently collect water vapor in the air and directly convert it into electricity, with excellent performance and applicable to a wide range of climate environments (relative humidity 10% to 85% and temperature range of -24 to 60 degrees Celsius). The humidity in Hong Kong is between 40% and 90% throughout the year, and the wet gas generator provides a promising green energy source for local and similar regions.

As a power generation material, ion gel uses its hygroscopicity and fast ion transmission characteristics to achieve efficient current density and energy output. The wet gas generator developed by Tao Xiaoming's team can not only stably output a DC voltage of 0.8V for more than 1,000 hours, but also produce high current density and outstanding output power density. More importantly, it can be integrated on a large scale to obtain 210V power output and successfully power many microelectronic devices, including counters, energy straps, electronic ink screens, and LED light arrays. Practice has shown that this gel-type wet gas generator has a simple preparation process, low price, and can be flexibly integrated. It has a wide range of application prospects in the fields of the Internet of Things and self-powered wearable electronic systems. Tao Xiaoming said that the product adopts a 3D printing production method, and there is still a lot of room for improvement. But the valuable thing is that this is another innovative breakthrough from "0 to 1". Although it is a long way to go, it can also promote scientific research while developing technology, and it has good theoretical results, which is really exciting.

Demand-oriented, producing romantic fabrics and protective products

As a scientist who has been focusing on smart textile research for a long time, Tao Xiaoming, compared with other scholars studying smart wearable systems, not only focuses on exploring more advanced smart materials, but also pays equal attention to the integration of microelectronic chips and textiles. She pointed out that the integrated electronic functions of textiles will be more comprehensive, more stable and controllable, and can also be directly connected to the Internet. In this way, the complex steps of first developing materials, then making fabrics, and finally finding ways to match fabrics with electronic devices and data processing collectors are bypassed. "Over the past decade, some foreign research institutions have conducted research in this area, but the results have been unsatisfactory. Against this background, we have taken on this burden."

The chip size is very small and the thickness is as thin as a hair. In order to put the microelectronic chip into the fabric, Tao Xiaoming's team transformed the existing microelectronic packaging and textile industry equipment, optimized the one-stop process route, parameters and materials of electronic textiles, and finally developed an electronic yarn. The diameter of the electronic yarn is less than 1 mm, and the bending stiffness is one-twentieth to one-thirtieth of the traditional one-dimensional copper wire circuit. This means that the chip fabric made on this basis feels very soft, as if it is not a rigid electronic device. Moreover, it can be washed, boiled in boiling water, soaked in sea water, placed in ice, and bent many times, and the performance is very stable. Later, in the development of textile electronic systems, they used LED chips to make electronic yarn and full-color fabric displays. When the Lunar New Year of the Rabbit arrived, Tao Xiaoming's team made a full-color fabric showing rabbit animations, and on the eve of White Valentine's Day, they launched a full-color fabric showing love animations. The collision of technology and art and culture has created a different kind of romance.

Curiosity and social needs are the driving forces behind innovation and breakthroughs

In 2014, a domestic company developed a polymer material produced by fermentation and invited a number of experts from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and PolyU to cooperate in research to explore whether it is possible to make fibers and textiles. "When the first batch of fiber samples were sent, there were many deficiencies in textile performance, but interestingly, we found that it actually had excellent broad-spectrum antibacterial properties. But after the second batch of samples were sent, this antibacterial property disappeared again." Guided by curiosity, Tao Xiaoming led the team to extract, extract and chemically analyze the two batches of samples, and for the first time discovered that the active ingredient was bio-based degradable polyhydroxybutyrate (PHBO) oligomers. "We synthesized similar samples in the laboratory to determine their antibacterial effects, mechanisms and minimum inhibitory concentrations."

On this basis, Tao Xiaoming and his collaborators industrially produced antibacterial fibers that were later named "Hesu Fiber" through rheological modification, reactive blending and melt spinning preparation methods, established quality control methods and laboratories, and achieved stable and reliable fiber production with antibacterial effects. Hesu fiber can achieve natural, additive-free, green and environmentally friendly antibacterial effects. It can destroy the cell walls of harmful bacteria, inhibit and kill bacteria, subverting the traditional method of relying on adding antibacterial agents to achieve excellent antibacterial effects. Using Hesu fiber as the base material, Tao Xiaoming cooperated with relevant companies to develop a series of new antibacterial products such as textiles and clothing, home textiles, maternal and child products, cosmetics, and sanitary products, integrating multiple fields across borders to protect people's health in all aspects.

At the beginning of 2020, Tao Xiaoming's team further discovered in experiments that bio-based degradable polyhydroxybutyrate not only has super antibacterial properties, but also has excellent virus disinfecting properties. The antiviral activity rate against the new coronavirus and various influenza viruses is 99.99% in 20 minutes. "Everyone quickly made up their minds that we must overcome the difficulties of the epidemic and use this antiviral property to do something beneficial to the fight against the epidemic." At that time, during the special period of the new crown infection, this new discovery was of great significance. The anti-epidemic products such as Hesu 75% alcohol wipes, Hesu antibacterial masks, and Hesu antibacterial protective clothing produced based on this have not only met domestic demand, but also actively connected with foreign demand, making contributions to the global fight against the epidemic.

▲Tao Xiaoming (fourth from right in the back row) with students

On this basis, Tao Xiaoming's team further prepared and characterized the polyhydroxyalkanoate oligomers and their derivatives, which are the same family as biodegradable polyhydroxybutyrate, and also have excellent broad-spectrum antibacterial and antiviral functions. They also have low biological toxicity, no allergy, no pollution (degradation products are water and carbon dioxide), and low carbon emissions, which are superior to other antibacterial and antiviral materials. This series of research and development results has ushered in an era of industrial production and application of new green antibacterial and antiviral materials. Now two technology companies are applying this scientific research result to mass-produce and sell synthetic polyhydroxyalkanoate oligomer antibacterial and antiviral materials, and are advancing towards the wide application of fiber, textile, clothing, and coating industries.

With a mission in mind, scientific research, education and industry iteration

The achievement of these achievements is inseparable from Tao Xiaoming's decades of hard work in the front line of teaching and research, working six and a half to seven days a week. In 2022, Tao Xiaoming's graduate tutor unfortunately passed away. Talking about this nearly 90-year-old textile physics master, she was filled with emotion. "He fell on the podium while teaching students and passed away three days later. The tutor has a profound influence on me, and his spirit of never-ending life and struggle has always made me admire him." As a teacher, I hope that the discipline can be passed on and innovated from generation to generation, cultivate outstanding talents, promote industry development, and challenge academic problems. This is the case for tutors, and Tao Xiaoming is also. But she knows that this is not something that can be accomplished in one or two generations or three to five years.

"Schools are places for training people. They need to train engineers, high-tech talents, civil servants and entrepreneurs. My philosophy is to let talents achieve the best in their own fields and have a healthy and happy life. I do not advocate that thousands of troops squeeze on a single-plank bridge. Such a life is too monotonous, too difficult and too bitter." Under the enlightened concept of educating people, Tao Xiaoming's students are spread across all walks of life, building a communication bridge between the industrial, academic, political and even artistic circles, and promoting the further development of intelligent textiles. "From another perspective, if a field is to develop well, it must have first-class talents to continue to do it. Looking back, although it is necessary to talk about industrialization and output value, after all, when the industrial level is low, it is a good thing for universities to help enterprises gain something." But fundamentally, Tao Xiaoming believes that the mission of the university is to train future talents, so she pays great attention to cultivating students' courage and perseverance to start from scratch, and fully gives them opportunities and platforms for innovation.

In the future, relying on the Intelligent Textile Wearable System Research Institute, Tao Xiaoming will focus on wearable system research in sports health, metaverse, and artificial intelligence. "Starting from the overall needs, we will advance new fields based on existing technologies, materials, and science." Having been working on the front line for a long time, Tao Xiaoming is very clear about the development and technology details of textile-based electronic devices. For nearly 30 years, she has led the team to conduct a review and summary study every 5 years with a mission in mind. In the process, she will not only focus on the team's projects, but also think about how to promote the development of related academic and industrial circles and cultivate talents for interdisciplinary exchanges.

When asked when he plans to stop, Tao Xiaoming said with a smile: "So far, I still feel that I am very energetic and have a lot of ideas. Compared with when I was young, I have a better judgment of projects and a keen sense of trends. I still have a steady stream of support from schools, industry, and the government, so why not continue? If one day I really run out of ideas, why should I occupy the position and not let others take over?" This wise and elegant smart textile master has extraordinary confidence and enthusiasm for his career, as well as admirable frankness and sincerity. Decades ago, silk and satin, spinning, dyeing and weaving; now, composite materials and electronic chips. These seemingly completely incompatible things met wonderfully in her life. She pulled the thin textile fibers with one hand and manipulated the rigid electronic devices with the other, as if interacting the ancient and the modern, and combining softness and hardness. Today, in a secluded corner of Hong Kong Island, such interesting collisions are still being staged and passed down from generation to generation.

Expert Profile

Tao Xiaoming is a professor of textile technology and dean of the Institute of Intelligent Wearable Systems at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He received a bachelor's degree in textile engineering from the East China Institute of Textile Technology (now Donghua University) in China in 1982. He was selected by the Ministry of Education to study abroad and received a doctorate in textile physics from the University of New South Wales, Australia in 1987. His main research areas are intelligent textile materials, optoelectronic devices and systems, and advanced textile manufacturing technologies. He has published more than 900 academic papers and 7 academic monographs. He has obtained 47 invention patents, more than ten of which have been adopted by manufacturers in many countries through franchise authorization. He has won the Guanghua Engineering Science and Technology Award of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, the Founder Award of the American Fiber Society, and the Honorary Fellow Award of the International Textile Society. He has served as the world president of the International Textile Society.