The fabric developed by this team of scientists has the ability to function like a microphone, “converting sound first into mechanical vibrations, then into electrical signals, similarly to how our ears hear.” Incredible as it may seem, a simple jacket could thus detect everyday sounds, such as a car engine, to alert a hearing-impaired person to potential danger. And that’s not the only use people could make of this smart fabric, as revealed in the researchers’ paper, published in the journal, Nature.

To achieve this feat, the engineers started from the observation that fabrics vibrate in response to audible sounds, but that these vibrations are not usually detectable. The objective was therefore to make them perceptible. This was made possible thanks to the development of a “flexible fiber” capable, when woven into a fabric, of bending with the fabric, as would “seaweed on the surface of the ocean.”

“The fiber is designed from a ‘piezoelectric’ material that produces an electrical signal when bent or mechanically deformed, providing a means for the fabric to convert sound vibrations into electrical signals,” the authors of this research explain. Not content with being able to capture all types of sound, including those least perceptible, the acoustic fabric can also determine the direction of sound, and even generate sounds that can be detected by other fabrics.

Communicating through clothing

This fabric could allow the clothes of the future to become hearing aids, allowing the hearing impaired to detect sounds in noisy environments, but it would also be able to monitor the wearer’s vital signs. By sewing the fiber to the inner lining of a shirt, just above the chest, the researchers found that it accurately detected heartbeats, indicating that the clothing could detect a potential problem.

Thanks to this new kind of fabric, clothes could be used for health purposes and communicate with each other, but researchers see further possibilities. “Wearing an acoustic garment, you might talk through it to answer phone calls and communicate with others,” explains Wei Yan, the lead author of the research. He concludes: “[The fiber] can be integrated with spacecraft skin to listen to (accumulating) space dust, or embedded into buildings to detect cracks or strains. It can even be woven into a smart net to monitor fish in the ocean. The fiber is opening widespread opportunities.”