Microscopic chain mail made from miniscule metal links has been made by US researchers. It could ultimately be used to create textiles with sensors and other electronics built in.

Jonathan Engel and Chang Liu at the UIUC, made their chain mail using manufacturing techniques borrowed from the microchip industry. The fabric has a similar tensile strength to nylon, can be bent around any shape and stretches to increase its length by one-third. It also readily conducts electricity.

The researchers were motivated to find flexible materials in which electronic sensors could be embedded. The fabric could be used to make smart clothing. Microchip-scale electronic components could perhaps also one day be built directly into the links of the chain-mail and this would allow sensors, communications or power components to be completely embedded within fully flexible fabrics.

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Augusta Systems Inc., today announced the release of SensorBridge v2.0, a suite of software components for Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 that enables rapid integration, intelligent processing and enterprise utilization of sensor data within an integrated development environment. The new SensorBridge v2.0 components add new machine to machine (M2M) communications features and expand the product’s prior capabilities for sensor networking and security convergence.

More information is available here.