• The big picture: Describe your vision for a game-changing future technology. Why is it new? What difference would it make for Europe's economy, society and citizens?

The textile industry represents worldwide a market around 400 billion€. Europe has remained for many centuries the leader of this many-centuries old technological field, but has been overcome on the mass markets by emerging countries, leading to severe socio-economic problems. The European industry has tried to keep the lead on the most added-value subsectors, building with some success on its strengths and image in the luxury sector, and in high-tech textiles, as used e.g. in composites, driven by the aerospace and automotive industry. Beyond these current applications, however, there is still a strongly underexploited potential market for high added-value smart textiles, in which Europe could take the lead thanks to its experience and know-how. The vast panel of textile fabrication technologies offer a unique potential to prepare artefacts with complex architectures of fibers, from meter to micrometer scales, at low cost and with an amazing technological maturity and robustness. So far, this has been exploited along the centuries for tuning the aesthetics, comfort and robustness or clothing, or more recently  in the composites industry, to optimize the transmission of mechanical constraints, leading to considerable gains in resistance/weight ratio as compared to bulk materials. Smart textiles, however, have a strong potential for  wearables, for which they open  the route to new functionalities. This potential has indeed been recognized in the  strategic foresight EC document “ Towards the third strategic programme of Horizon 2020” (http://bookshop.europa.eu/en/strategic-foresight-pbKI0215938/). Beyond this, there is also a huge and almost unexploited potential for  numerous other devices for e.g. health, sport, well-being, soft electronics. Textile multifunctional devices offer in particular the possibility to bridge the gap between current microfabricated systems, powerful but expensive, and paper or organic electronics, cheap but limited in functionalities.

• The work needed: What are the main breakthroughs that a proactive initiative on this would need to achieve? What range of disciplines and stakeholders should be involved?

In order to overcome the gap described above, there is a need for a complete ab initio rethinking of smart devices design, unleashing the unexploited power of the textile technology, combining in interdisciplinary teams actors of the textile industry and research, together with scientists experienced in devices design  (e.g., depending on the applications considered, micro-nanotechnologists, biochemists, analytical chemists, physicists) and end-users (also depending on the application field, clinicians, ergonomists, designers, etc…)

• The opportunity: What makes you believe that, with suitable time and investment, this can be achieved? Are there developments in science or society that make it plausible? What will drive this to real innovation and impact?

Recent developments in paper and organic electronics or microfluidics have shown that indeed the transposition to non-silicon material of numerous applications previously restricted to the silicon world is possible, and is raising considerable interest. Indeed, textile fabrication technologies offer a much more versatile, tunable and powerful means for preparing complex architectures than the paper industry, while remaining amenable to mass production at low cost. There is thus a multi-billions market potential for smart, functional textiles to be developed in connection with the massive development of portable, personal and connected devices, within the single digital market.