With significant expertise in multifunctional plastics manufacturing, nanoscale manufacturing and printed electronics, UMass Lowell develops innovative flexible electronics and smart textiles that solve problems across a variety of industries.
Developing innovative flexible electronics and smart textiles that solve problems across industries.
Established with a $10 million grant from the state, Fabric Discovery Center officially opened its doors in July 2018. Housed alongside the university’s Innovation Hub business incubator at 110 Canal St. in downtown Lowell, the center offers 28,000 square feet of space for research, design, prototyping, pilot manufacturing and testing of advanced materials. The space-age fabrics incorporate sensors and communications features that can be woven into designs to do everything from detecting dehydration in soldiers to monitoring buildings for leaking pipes.
Research Project Examples
- Developing high-frequency printed conformal antennas, carbon-based transistors and photonic devices.
- Researching wearable antennas for the military by printing small conductive patterns on uniforms.
- Compounding and processing of new substrates for flexible hybrid electronics.
- Printing and packaging from 2D and 3D printing technologies for wearable health monitoring, sensor and soft robotics programming.
