Is this Light-Up Fiber the Future of Smart Clothing?

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Invented by a doctoral student, it has the potential to revolutionize e-textiles. Yang Weifeng places an ordinary-looking thread in water, then watches as it lights up like an electrified fluorescent tube. When woven into a fabric, the entire swatch illuminates at a touch, as though his finger were a magic wand. But Yang’s glowing cloth isn’t magic; it’s the product of a concerted effort by researchers at the Advanced Functional Materials Group (AFMG), part of Donghua University in Shanghai. The results, which were published in Science this April, represent a potentially significant step toward wearable computers. The paper was also a major achievement for Donghua, which had been trying for years to get one of its researchers published in the pages of a top-two scientific journal. But Yang, a doctoral student at the school’s College of Materials Science and Engineering, seems uncomfortable with his sudden rise to on-campus fame. Soft-spoken and slightly awkward, he seems to hai ………………………………