About

Professor Trisha L. Andrew is a Professor of Chemistry and Materials Science & Engineering at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she directs the Wearable Electronics Lab. Her research team is transdisciplinary and focuses on creating embedded optoelectronic systems on uncommon platforms by leveraging functional polymer coatings formed through a suite of reactive deposition techniques developed in her lab. Professor Andrew began her academic career as an Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Electrical Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison after earning her Ph.D. from MIT in 2011. She has a unique background combining synthetic organic chemistry and microelectronic device fabrication, which informs her problem-solving skills and diverse research interests. Her research explores innovative chemistry methods and the development of smart garments and flexible electronics. A key technique in her lab is Reactive Vapor Deposition (RVD), a vapor-phase polymerization process that enables the formation of polymer films directly on substrates, including rough and complex surfaces such as textiles. This method allows for the creation of conformal coatings with micro- and nanoscale features, facilitating the integration of multifunctional polymer and hybrid thin films into fabrics. Her group develops highly conductive fabric and thread electrodes, smart garments with embedded electronic components like transistors and sensors, and energy-harvesting textiles such as solar fabrics and fabric thermopiles. These advances not only enable new wearable electronic devices but also reduce environmental impact by minimizing water pollution associated with traditional textile processing. Professor Andrew's work also extends to fundamental studies of crystal growth and optoelectronic properties in organic thin films, as well as pioneering subdiffraction optical lithography techniques using photochromic molecules for nanoscale patterning. Her interdisciplinary approach combines chemistry, materials science, and engineering to push the boundaries of wearable electronics and nanomanufacturing technologies.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Materials science
• Human–computer interaction
• Embedded system
• Political Science
• Nanotechnology
• Telecommunications
• Medicine
• Molecular biology
• Risk analysis (engineering)
• Electronic engineering
• Computer vision
• Chemistry
• Biochemistry
• Optics
• Engineering
• Chromatography
• Algorithm
• Optoelectronics

Selected publications

• Passive Solar Heat Transfer via Photothermal Skins for Capability-Enhancing Building Retrofits

  ACS Applied Engineering Materials · 2026-03-14

  articleCorresponding

  Rising energy costs in dwellings cause a significant negative social impact, creating energy insecurity. In the United States, over 33 million homes report forms of energy insecurity, with over 24 million residents, often renters, reporting reducing or foregoing food or reducing energy consumption to minimize energy costs. Here, we describe a straightforward yet underexplored method of heat generation and delivery, photothermal heating through walls, that can be adopted by individual tenants to improve the thermal conditions of their homes without compromising their health or housing security. We detail a lightweight fabric-based photoactive skin that is designed to be used as a removable additive layer over existing walls, and demonstrate its performance as capability enhancers that passively increase the temperature of indoor environments. Photons are leveraged as a free, widely distributed energy source, a light-absorbing polymer is used to convert the energy contained in photons into heat, and the heat thus generated is directly transported into building interiors through the building envelope. Outdoor tests with physical house models prove that a 4.8 °C increase in interior temperature can be realized over a single day-night cycle by loosely affixing a photoactive skin to one face of the overall building envelope. Building energy simulations reveal that the supplemental heat created by wall photothermal heating can lead to a 15% reduction in heating energy demand for a standard residential building, with a maximum reduction of 23% projected for a large 16-story residential structure in northern latitudes.

  PublisherDOI

• Carbon Removal from Seawater Using an Electrochemically Driven pH Swing

  ECS Meeting Abstracts · 2025-11-24

  article

  The ocean’s immense reservoir of dissolved inorganic carbon, along with its absorption of nearly 25% of anthropogenic CO₂ emissions since the 1960s, makes it a compelling pathway for large-scale carbon removal. Capturing CO₂ directly from seawater not only enables gigaton-scale sequestration, but also alleviates ocean acidification. Especially, electrochemical processes have garnered considerable attention due to their low theoretical energy requirements and compatibility with renewable energy sources. However, existing methods face challenges in cost, material sustainability, and operational efficiency—motivating the development of novel methods that leverage the unique advantages of the ocean water reservoir. We demonstrate using reaction-transport modeling and experiments that porous electrodes active for proton-coupled electron transfer (PCET) can facilitate energy-efficient seawater carbon removal through a reversible pH swing. Experimental CO₂ removal from artificial seawater using a flow cell containing porous poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT)-coated textile substrates bearing poly-aminoanthraquinone (PAAQ) moieties achieves carbon removal at ~1.2 μmol CO2 cm -2 hr -1 and < 500 kJ mol CO2 -1 . We develop a reaction-transport model that represents the interplay among one-dimensional proton transport within the PCET-active electrode, electron-transfer kinetics and overpotentials, carbon speciation in the aqueous electrolyte, and the rate of dissolved CO 2 removal. The model indicates that with further optimization of charge transport and CO 2 removal rates, carbon removal at 240 μmol CO2 cm -2 hr -1 and 250 kJ mol CO2 -1 can be achieved. Finally, we introduce a microprocessor-controlled system for automated delivery of seawater to and from the flow cell, which paves the way to semi-continuous operation. These results illustrate the practical viability of our approach to seawater carbon capture, and show that it can be achieved with readily available organic materials and textiles, without relying on critical minerals, electrocatalysts, or bipolar membranes.

  PublisherDOI

• FabToys: Large Arrays of Fabric-Based Pressure Sensors in Plush Toys to Detect Fine-Grained Interaction

  Communications of the ACM · 2025-03-25

  articleOpen access

  Recent advances in fabric-based sensors have made it possible to densely instrument textile surfaces on smart toys without changing their look and feel. While such surfaces can be instrumented with traditional sensors, rigid elements change the nature of interaction and diminish the appeal of plush toys. In this work, we propose FabToy, a plush toy instrumented with a 24-sensor array of fabric-based pressure sensors located beneath the surface of the toy to have dense spatial sensing coverage while maintaining the natural feel of fabric and softness of the toy. We optimize both the hardware and software pipeline to reduce overall power consumption while achieving high accuracy in detecting a wide range of interactions at different regions of the toy. Our contributions include a) sensor array fabrication to maximize coverage and dynamic range, b) data acquisition and triggering methods to minimize the cost of sampling a large number of channels, and c) neural network models with early exit to optimize power consumed for computation when processing locally and autoencoder-based channel aggregation to optimize power consumed for communication when processing remotely. We demonstrate that we can achieve high accuracy of more than 83% for robustly detecting and localizing complex human interactions such as swiping, patting, holding, and tickling in different regions of the toy.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Fabric and Fiber-Integrated, Washable Hydrogel Electrodes for Clinically Accurate Sleep Monitoring in-Home

  ECS Meeting Abstracts · 2024-08-09

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Longitudinal tracking of sleep metrics is important for detecting and managing various diseases, spanning cardiorespiratory disorders to dementia. However, at present, sleep monitoring primarily occurs in specialized medical facilities that are not conducive to longterm studies. In-home solutions either compromise user comfort or signal accuracy in tracking sleep variables and have not yet provided reliable longitudinal data. We believe that human-centered design of multimodal, low-form-factor, comfortable sensing systems is needed for this increasingly-important area of preventative health monitoring. Our lab developed a suite of fabric-based and/or garment-integrated sensors and sensing modalities that accurately and reliably extract important sleep metrics, such as posture, cardiorespiratory signals, eye movement and brain activity, over the course of an eight-hour sleep session. Our garment-integrated sensing arrays do not require a medical professional for on-body positioning, maintain their function independent of sizing and fit on individual users, and can be laundered or cleaned with antibacterial wipes without compromising its varied sensing elements. Here, we describe one of these two key sensors, a fabric or fiber-based electrochemical hydrogel electrode that enables wearable biopotential monitoring, including electrocardiography (ECG), eletrooculography (EOG) and electroencephalography (EEG), from which the aforementioned sleep metrics can be recorded and quantified with clinical precision and accuracy. The hydrogel is fabricated as a coating on either commodity fabrics or threads using a low-temperature reactive deposition process, termed photoinitiated chemical vapor deposition (piCVD), during which hydrogel monomers react with a photoinitator in the vapor phase to create a polymeric hydrogel coating directly on the surface of fabrics or threads that have been temporarily surface modified with a skin-safe electrolyte gel. The resulting composite hydrogel coating isolated from this operation is ionically conductive, can be reversibly swelled in water and dried without losing ionic conductivity, and transduces the ionic signals (fluxes) experienced by the body into an electrical signal that can be captured by any commercial ECG, EOG or EEG monitoring instrument. An array of these fabric or thread-based hydrogel electrodes can be integrated into readily-available garments using simple cut-sew techniques and these garments can then be worn throughout the night to effect continuous ECG, EOG and EEG monitoring at home. Design elements of a custom-made circuit board that allows simultaneous capture of these signals will be described. Results from an ongoing user study of >50 adults will be presented to validate the clinical precision and accuracy of these garment sensor for sleep quality monitoring.

  PublisherDOI

• Towards Immobilized Proton-Coupled Electron Transfer Agents for Electrochemical Carbon Capture from Air and Seawater

  Journal of The Electrochemical Society · 2024-05-01 · 9 citations

  articleOpen access

  Electrochemical CO 2 separation has drawn attention as a promising strategy for using renewable energy to mitigate climate change. Redox-active compounds that undergo proton-coupled electron transfer (PCET) are an impetus for pH-swing-driven CO 2 capture at low energetic costs. However, multiple barriers hinder this technology from maturing, including sensitivity to oxygen and the slow kinetics of CO 2 capture. Here, we use vapor phase chemistry to construct a textile electrode comprising an immobilized PCET agent, poly(1-aminoanthraquinone) (PAAQ), and incorporate it into redox flow cells. This design contrasts with others that use dissolved PCET agents by confining proton-storage to the surface of an electrode kept separate from an aqueous, CO 2 -capturing phase. This system facilitates carbon capture from gaseous sources (a 1% CO 2 feed and air), as well as seawater, with the latter at an energetic cost of 202 kJ/mol CO2 , and we find that quinone moieties embedded within the electrode are more stable to oxygen than dissolved counterparts. Simulations using a 1D reaction-transport model show that moderate energetic costs should be possible for air capture of CO 2 with higher loadings of polymer-bound PCET moieties. The remarkable stability of this system sets the stage for producing textile-based electrodes that facilitate pH-swing-driven carbon capture in practical situations.

  PublisherDOI

• Perspective: Materials and Electronics Gaps in Transdermal Drug Delivery Patches

  ECS Sensors Plus · 2024-02-12 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Transdermal drug delivery systems offer a noninvasive method of delivering drugs through the skin surface, which circumvents problems associated with metabolic breakdown, uncontrollable biodistribution after initial drug administration, and limited patient compliance. The most common implement for transdermal drug delivery is the transdermal patch (TDP), which is a flexible, medicated adhesive patche that can be placed on any available skin surface for targeted delivery. In this perspective, we summarize the most recent advancements in transdermal drug delivery patches and highlight gaps that can be filled with advanced sensor development.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Microstructured Reflective Coatings on Commodity Textiles for Passive Personal Cooling

  ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces · 2024-10-18 · 6 citations

  articleSenior authorCorresponding

  As the effects of climate change become more severe and widespread, maintaining personal thermal homeostasis becomes necessary for survival. In principle, advanced textiles and garments have the ability to leverage light absorption, transmission and/or reflection, in addition to straightforward convection, to heat or cool bodies in extreme temperature conditions. For cooling, in particular, surfaces adept at selectively reflecting or refracting high-energy incident light (200 nm–2.5 mm) from the sun while transmitting or emitting infrared light (8–13 mm) from radiant body heat boast the ability to maintain cooler body temperatures, even when exposed to direct sunlight and the open sky. Here, we present a strategy to transform common clothing into implements for passive personal cooling. As confirmed by Mie scattering calculations, cheap and biocompatible calcium carbonate and barium sulfate micro/nanoparticles are found to serve as suitable reflectors for radiative cooling. Finite-difference time domain simulations reveal, surprisingly, that higher reflectance is achieved with surface coatings containing these materials, as compared to extruded metamaterial fibers containing CaCO3 and BaSO4 particles embedded within a polymer matrix. A stepwise process involving photoinitiated chemical vapor deposition and ion-exchange driven crystal growth is used to create a lamellar composite coating comprised of alternating CaCO3 and BaSO4 nano/microparticle layers directly on the surface of common fabrics. A polyester poplin fabric coated in this manner shows a cooling ability of up to 8 °C compared to an uncoated sample, achieving a maximum cooling of 6 °C below ambient temperature. Wash and durability testing of the lamellar coating reveal no mechanical degradation and no evident attenuation in the material’s performance, affirming its resilience and long-term effectiveness as a functional textile coating for personal cooling. We also assess the performance of our coated fabrics in multiple outdoor environments to conclude that we can achieve up to 3.4 °C of sub-ambient cooling in optically complex built environments.

  PublisherDOI

• Fabric Pressure Sensors for Fine-Grained Interaction Detection in Plush Toys

  GetMobile Mobile Computing and Communications · 2024-01-08

  article

  Recent advances in fabric-based sensors have made it possible to densely instrument plush toys without altering their aesthetic or tactile appeal, unlike traditional sensors whose rigid components can negatively impact the interactive experience. This innovation opens a new realm of interaction possibilities, allowing for the detection of nuanced gestures and movements that are crucial for understanding behavior, enhancing engagement, and potentially monitoring cognitive functions in therapeutic contexts.

  PublisherDOI

• Bioinspired Diffuse Reflectance Coatings for Fabric-Based Radiative Coolers

  ECS Meeting Abstracts · 2024-08-09

  articleSenior author

  As global temperatures rise due to anthropogenic climate change, thermal comfort becomes an increasingly critical area of research. While most buildings are equipped to cool and heat their interiors, this process is very energy intensive; a smarter approach is to enable personal thermal management using clothing and textiles. In particular, we are interested in the ability to use textiles and clothing to cool bodies in extreme heat, both to maintain comfort and prevent deaths in urban deserts due to heat stroke. One innovative category in this realm is radiative coolers—surfaces adept at manipulating light to passively regulate temperature. These coolers achieve sub-ambient surface temperatures by selectively reflecting or refracting sunlight wavelengths (200nm-2.5µm) while emitting infrared light (8-13µm). This unique capability allows them to maintain cooler temperatures, even when exposed to direct sunlight and the open sky. Coatings facilitating this cooling action typically consist of a porous media filled with refractive gaps, requiring specific substrates and custom production processes, thereby limiting their applications. Furthermore, the necessity of low light transmission presents issues in creating fabrics that radiatively cool while still retaining high breathability and durability. In this study we present a method whereby an optically active coating comprised of a mixture of CaCO 3 and BaSO 4 microcrystals was applied to multiple fabric substrates to create a radiative cooler. Through the use of photoinitiated chemical vapor deposition (pICVD), a 5 µm thick layer of a hydrophilic polymer polyhydroxyethyleneacrylate (pHEA) was deposited on the fabric substrate. Subsequently, through serial immersion in solutions containing Ca and Ba ions and solutions containing CO 3 and SO 4 ions, inorganic microcrystals were grown directly on the surface of the fabric. These microcrystals formed with a large polydispersity, endowing the coating with excellent reflective properties in the solar spectrum. Mie scattering calculations confirmed that the CaCO 3 and BaSO 4 microcrystals were primarily responsible for scattering. Further simulations using finite difference time domain software revealed, surprisingly, that surface-immobilized crystals provided the highest reflection efficiency, indicating that composite fibers with embedded particles are not as efficient. Upon outdoor testing, the device showed a cooling ability of 8°C compared to an uncoated fabric, achieving a maximum cooling of 4°C below ambient temperature. Washing and durability testing of the coating found no degradation in the material's performance, affirming its resilience and long-term effectiveness.

  PublisherDOI

• Development of Dual-Gel System for Wearable Electrochemical Sensors

  ECS Meeting Abstracts · 2024-08-09 · 1 citations

  articleSenior author

  With the innovation of materials and rapid development of wearable technology, wearable electronics—particularly textile-based systems—have broadened perspectives in health monitoring, therapy, and disease diagnosis. Bioelectronics interpret analyte information into real-time electrical signals with high sensitivity. Realizing the selective detection of analytes in biofluids often requires bioreceptors, such as enzymes, antibodies, and DNA, along with corresponding electrochemical detection techniques. Enzymatic sensors have relatively complex sensing structures among others. Enzymes function as biocatalysts at the sensing interface, facilitating electron transfer from analytes to the electrode surface. To enhance overall data acquisition, redox mediators are typically incorporated into these systems. Wearable bioelectronics are currently fabricated by depositing functional materials onto conformal flexible substrates using techniques such as spin coating, spray coating, printing, etching, and other technologies. However, seamlessly integrating multi-layer textile-based biosensors necessitates specific screen mesh and inkjet angles that ultimately limit the manufacturing process. Here, we propose a dual-gel system consisting of a base gel embedding functional materials (redox mediators and bioreceptors) and an encapsulation gel to stabilize the base gel while offering antifouling properties. The thin dual-gel film is fabricated through blade-casting followed by photo-initiated Chemical Vapor Deposition (piCVD) and can seamlessly adhere to various rough fabric surfaces. Moreover, this solvent-free process largely prevents bioreceptor degradation, promising better manufacturing sustainability. Glucose detection on flexible electrodes utilizing such a dual-gel system is exemplified as a proof-of-concept. This unique dual-gel system is expected to contribute to the development of textile-based electronics with greater versatility and improved sensing performance.

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• Vapor Phase Organic Chemistry to Deposit Conjugated Polymer Films on Textiles

  NSF · $336k · 2018–2022

• Controlled Growth and Optoelectronic Characterization of Crystalline Oriented Organic P-N Junction Nanostructures

  NSF · $414k · 2017–2022

Frequent coauthors

• Timothy M. Swager

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  32 shared

• Lushuai Zhang

  University of Massachusetts Amherst

  26 shared

• Deepak Ganesan

  21 shared

• Kwang‐Won Park

  University of Massachusetts Amherst

  20 shared

• Rajesh Menon

  20 shared

• S. Zohreh Homayounfar

  University of Massachusetts Amherst

  20 shared

• Ali Kiaghadi

  University of Massachusetts Amherst

  20 shared

• David Bilger

  16 shared

Labs

• Wearable Electronics LabPI

  Creating embedded (opto)electronic systems on uncommon platforms by leveraging functional polymer coatings formed by a suite of reactive deposition techniques developed in the lab.