Luminous textile

Luminous products are available as an electroluminous plastic sheet or electroluminous wires. The product provides a large, smooth, flexible area of light, which does not get hot and consumes very little electrical power. Any image may be printed on the surface to a high resolution and, with only basic electronics, luminous animation effects can be produced.

Luminex is a new fabric (non-reflective) that can emit its own light. It is created with threads of every type and nature that emits light in different colors. The luminous fibers used in Luminex are special "detectors of elementary particles" fibers used in the largest scientific experiments of sub-nuclear physics. After numerous attempts and experiments, it's finally possible to integrate a luminous fiber into a fabric, giving it its own brilliance. Very cool. But it will be much cooler when someone actually uses this to make something that actually looks good. Very cool. But it will be much cooler when someone actually uses this to make something that actually looks good.

Because this technology uses electroluminous inks, it can be applied to a wide variety of backings such as plastic, textiles, glass, paper etc. Application of the ink does not affect the properties of the backing, which can then be integrated into other products using adhesives, velcro or sewing.

Luminous textile is a truly flexible way of creating the right atmosphere for a specific space, whatever its function, thanks to the wide range of Kvadrat textiles and broad spectrum of colors in Philips’ LED range. Through integrated LED lights, coupled with the texture of the panels, sound is not only absorbed to create a comfortable working environment but the retail and hospitality experience can also be enhanced through the display of dynamic visual content. It allows for a space to be completely transformed and enables a brand’s identity to really shine through.

Luminous textiles have the potential to satisfy a need for thin and flexible light diffusers for treatment of intraoral cancerous tissue. Plastic optical fibers (POF) with diameters of 250 microns and smaller are used to make the textiles luminous. Usually light is supplied to the optical fiber at both ends. On the textile surface light emission occurs in a woven structure via damaged straight POFs, whereas the embroidered structure radiates the light out of macroscopically bent POFs. We compared the optical properties of these two types of textile diffusers using red light laser for the embroidery and light emitting diode (LED) for the woven structure as light sources, and found efficiencies for the luminous areas of the two samples of 19 % (woven) and 32 % (embroidery), respectively. It was shown that the efficiency can be greatly improved using an aluminium backing. Additional scattering layers lower the fluence rate by around 30 %. To analyse the homogeneity we took a photo of the illuminated surface using a 3CCD camera and found, for both textiles, a slightly skewed distribution of the dark and bright pixels. The interquartile range of brightness distribution of the embroidery is more than double as the woven structure.

Application:

Fashion: Luminous El Tex provides an original hi-tech look for fashion clothes and accessories.

Safety Wear: Luminous EL Tex is the perfect solution for integration in high visibility safety wear.

Decoration: Luminous EL Tex provides an attractive lighting effect, adding to the atmosphere where subdued lighting is appropriate.

Tailor made solutions: Luminous EL Tex is a technology which is highly flexible in both shape and size and can be used in any application which requires a characteristic lighting effect.