Clothes Made From A Data-Storing Fabric Will Remember Pass Codes For You

Fabrics that conduct electricity have been a fertile area of exploration for researchers. They’ve come up with textiles that can keep you warm with just the turn of a dial, or that power your phone with your normal movements. A team from the University of Washington has now developed a fabric that can store data without any electronics or batteries. “You can think of the fabric as a hard disk—you’re actually doing this data storage on the clothes you’re wearing,” Shyam Gollakota, one of the researchers on the team, told UW News. They do it by magnetizing off-the-shelf conductive thread—already in use in products such as stuffed animals or accessories that light up—to create a textile with its own magnetic signature. The fabric can retain digital data in binary 1s and 0s, or visual information such as letters and numbers. A wristband, belt, or even just a patch on a sleeve made from this fabric could, therefore, replace passcodes or keycards to open doors with electronic locks. Just like normal fabric, it can be washed, dried, and ironed. Read more at Quartz.