Bioinspired acoustic textiles with nanoscale vibrations for wearable biomonitoring

The smart textile research community is advancing rapidly with the aim of changing the way we wear clothes in the near future. An eardrum-inspired acoustic textile was recently developed that can function as a sensitive audible microphone. The acoustic textile is woven from yarns with a high Young’s modulus and thermal drawing composite piezoelectric fibers that can concentrate mechanical stress in the piezoelectric composite layer during the heat drawing process, endowing the fiber with high sensitivity. The acoustic textile can convert even very slight 10⁻⁷ atmospheric pressure waves at audible frequencies into mechanical vibrations with nanometer amplitudes, which further induce the electrical signals through the fibers to detect the direction of sound pulses, broadcast human speech, and capture heartbeats, making it suitable as a wearable platform for long-term biomonitoring.