Responsive Polymer Composite Fiber
Authors: Feng Jianyou , Peng Huisheng 
Published: April 2022

Comprehensive Summary

Wearable devices are a mainstream for our future daily life, where responsive polymer composite fibers represent one of the key components. However, their practical applications are hampered by several challenges, including poor responsive reversibility, poor controllability and low stability as well as single function. Herein, we share our recent studies on overcoming the above challenges for achieving novel responsive polymer composite fibers, especially focusing on chromatic fibers, deformational fibers and their integrations. Furthermore, we introduce a type of novel materials for these responsive fiber materials, i.e., aligned carbon nanotube sheets and fibers simultaneously with excellent electrical, optical and mechanical properties. For the future development, we further highlight the possible directions in this field.

What is the most favorite and original chemistry developed in your research group?

The conception and realization of display textile. Displays are the basic building blocks of electronics. Integrating displays into textiles offers exciting opportunities for smart electronic textiles, which are believed to change the future life of the human being. For instance, display textiles serve to bridge human‐machine interactions, and a real‐time communication tool may become true for individuals with voice or speech disorders. After hard work for over ten years, we have finally achieved this goal at lab and further produced such display textiles at large scale at industry.

How do you get into this specific field? Could you please share some experiences with our readers?

When I started to do research independently at Fudan University, I tried to do something unique. I just did not hope to simply follow the available direction. I majored at chemical fibers during my undergraduate study and later made research on electronic devices, so it was natural for me to combine fibers and electronics together. I do not remember the detail time I figured out the idea. In my mind, it should be very interesting and must be very cool. I did not know and even had not thought whether they were useful or not. After the paper was published in 2021, so many people contacted us for the use of display textiles for a spectrum of applications. During the study on the display textiles that have been also investigated for smart systems, we started to explore new smart fiber

materials almost at the same time. These smart fiber materials are discussed in this article.

How do you supervise your students?

First, it is important for me to understand them as every student is unique. Second, according to their characteristics, I may choose specific research projects, often following their interests. Third, I fully respect them when they start the research. They are totally free to decide the work time and work style. I trace the process mainly aiming at solving problems for them. Of course, I keep asking them to enhance their scientific tastes and make the first‐class research, not only so‐called original science or technology. I will try my best to help them to publish their results at top journals, which is important for their future development. During the whole training process, the most important thing I hope to achieve is enjoying science, at least feel successful. It is obviously not easy. Sometimes we make it, and sometimes we fail. We always work for the better full of hope. I sincerely hope that every student, after graduation, will have a good memory at my lab.

What is the most important personality for scientific research?

I think there are two very important characteristics. One is brave. A scientist should be brave to solve the most difficult problem in the field. The other is imagination. Science is pretty similar to arts in many aspects. We may fix the gap sometimes through imagination. However, it is particularly challenging to train scientists for good imagination in science.