MIT and Fibers That Can Hear and Speak

By Elgin

MIT produced fabrics of the future that could both hear and make noises. Yoel Fink, an assistant professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and his colleagues developed fibers that are active where most are passive. Specifically, through a new application of widely used technology called piezoelectrics, fibers can convert sound waves into an electrical signal and vice versa.

Different-shaped fibers can emit sounds in a variety of ways. (Credit: MIT)

Piezoelectric speakers have been around for a long time, usually for digital watches and musical greeting cards. Fink's approach is making the fibers so that one side is different from the other, rather than being symmetric. One edge of the fiber has more fluorine atoms running along it, and the other has more hydrogen atoms. This difference is responsible for the connection between the fibers' movement, whether caused by sound or causing it, and its electrical properties. "Fabrics woven from piezoelectric fibers could be used as a communication transceiver," the researchers wrote, describing their approach in the July 11 issue of Nature Materials.

Not only this kind of fabrics can speak and hear, MIT has also developed camera-like fibers that is sensitive to light. If developed further, th fibers could give a soldier a uniform that would help him see threats in all directions.

However, don't expect to see this soon. There are manufacturing and other practical constraints, including the fibers today work only with kilohertz to megahertz sound frequencies, and humans employ much lower frequencies.