Research group on "Smart Materials and Innovative Textile Applications (SMITA)"

It is a body of faculty and students from IIT Delhi who are working on developing novel intelligent, smart and functional materials for textile applications. The research group is working very closely with Indian Industry in developing Smart Textiles or Intelligent Textile materials and taking some of these technologies to commercial scale.

Prof. Ashwini Agrawal and Prof. Manjeet Jassal, faculty, IIT Delhi and their group have core competency in this field of Smart Textile and have developed several active technologies. These technologies are radically changing the functionality of textile by creating sensitive, interactive and intelligent textile materials.

SMITA Group has been instrumental in:

    • Creating a national facility, where both basic research and technology development for industrial applications are being carried out in the area of smart textile using innovative materials such as nanoparticles, nanofibres, nano-surface engineering, phase change materials, and stimuli sensitive polymers. Specifically following areas of technologies are being pursued:

    1.    Stimuli (temperature, pH, and electric field) sensitive materials for applications in artificial muscles, robotics, and responsive textile

    2.    Encapsulated phase change materials for thermo-regulated smart textile

    3.    Inorganic phase change materials for storage and transport

    4.    Nanofinishes for active functionality of textile substrates

    5.    Nanofibres, organic and inorganic, using electrospinning 

    6.    Nano-surface engineering using atmospheric pressure cold plasma

    7.    Functional coatings for textile

    8.    Bicomponent and specialty fibres

    9.    Fibres based on nanocomposites

    • Bringing together expertise from Academia and Industry to facilitate development of new technologies/products in the upcoming area of smart textile at par with anywhere in the world.
    • Creating trained manpower that can assist industry in further research, product development, and production of smart textile based on new technologies.