---
title: A Touchscreen Sleeve Made by NUS Researchers Still Works After 50 Machine Washes
description: NUS researchers wove 54 light-emitting fibres into a sleeve to make a full-colour touchscreen that still works after 50 machine washes, per a Nature paper.
author: Darie Nani (Editor-in-Chief)
date: 2026-10-23T12:36:34.513Z
updated: 2026-10-23T12:36:34.527Z
canonical: https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/nus-touchscreen-sleeve-nature-study
image: https://cdn.nanimediahouse.com/nus-fibre-touchscreen-sleeve-476207.webp
categories: Science & Tech
content_type: News
region: Global
publication: Sovereign Magazine
schema_type: Article
---

Researchers at the National University of Singapore have woven 54 light-emitting fibres into the forearm of a sleeve to make a full-colour touchscreen that still works after 50 cycles in a washing machine. The team, led by Assistant Professor Tural Khudiyev of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at NUS's College of Design and Engineering, [published the work in Nature](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-11128-9) on 21 October 2026. The university describes the sleeve as "the world's first touchscreen built into a garment".

Nature ran the paper with a News & Views commentary by Shanshan Yao, a mechanical engineer at Stony Brook University in New York who was not part of the team. Yao wrote that by "seamlessly assembling electronic devices directly into fibres, the authors have turned everyday clothing into a graphical user interface".

Nature has published fabric electronics before, including large-area display textiles in 2021 and a single-fibre computer in 2025, and the new paper cites both. In the new paper, the NUS authors write that existing approaches "do not naturally provide the digitally addressable, high-throughput, information-rich interfaces required for interactive GUIs". Their fibre puts addressable pixels and a touch sensor in the same thread, so the wearer can tap the sleeve the way they would tap a phone.

## The Sleeve Runs a Calculator, a Photo Gallery and Video on 5,184 Pixels

Each of the 54 fibres carries 96 LEDs, giving a display of 96 by 54 pixels, or 5,184 in all, across 168 mm by 105 mm. That is a very low resolution next to a phone screen, but it refreshes at 30 frames per second with 8-bit colour. On the prototype a wearer can run a calculator, scroll through photos, play video, use a compass, give voice commands and receive images over Bluetooth, functions NUS likens to those of early smartphones. When the sleeve is worn with the temperature-sensing fibre under the arm, it reads the wearer's body temperature and shows it on the display.

Pressing a fibre completes a circuit in a touch-sensing layer beneath the LEDs, and the signal shows where along the thread the finger landed, so the nearest pixel lights up. Every fibre has its own control channel, which means a fault in one line leaves the others working and the sleeve can register several touches at once.

## The Team Used a Laser and Molten Solder to Join More Than 5,000 Chips

To make the fibres, the team used a laser to expose connection points along fine insulated wires exactly where each chip needed one, then guided molten solder to bond only at those points. Across the sleeve's fibres that meant more than 5,000 chips joined through over 20,000 electrical connections. The strip of LEDs was then heated and drawn into a multilayer thread about a millimetre thick and 10 metres long.

"A fibre has a one-dimensional, axially symmetric geometry, which makes it difficult to build complex circuitry using approaches developed for conventional two-dimensional electronics," Khudiyev said.

## Light and Touch Were Nearly Unchanged After 50 Washes and 1,000 Bends

The team put the sleeve through 50 detergent washes in a typical washing machine and bent it 1,000 times around a 5 mm radius, and its light output and touch response barely changed. The researchers report that the fabric breathes as well as cotton, polyester and denim and stays within established safety limits for contact with skin.

## Singapore's National Medical Research Council and Health Ministry Funded the Work

The paper acknowledges funding from Singapore's National Medical Research Council and Ministry of Health. "Healthcare is one particularly promising application," Khudiyev said. "A garment could continuously collect physiological information through fibre-based sensors and allow the wearer to access and interact with that information directly through their clothing."

NUS says thinner versions of the fibre can be knitted, woven and embroidered on standard industrial machines, and that smaller chips would allow sharper, larger displays. The team next plans to raise the resolution and add on-device artificial intelligence. It has published its analysis code and source data on GitHub.

## FAQ

**Q: When could you buy clothing like this?**
NUS has not announced a product, a partner or a release date. The paper was received by Nature in January 2026 and published in October.