Abstract
Hair loss presents a widespread clinical and psychological challenge, yet conventional pharmacological treatments often incur systemic side effects such as hormonal imbalance and mood disturbances. To provide a non-pharmacological alternative, a wearable textile-integrated near-infrared (NIR) organic light-emitting diode (OLED) platform was developed with emission closely aligned with the action spectrum of human dermal papilla cells (hDPCs). By employing a top-emitting microcavity structure, we tuned the emission peak of the NIR OLEDs (around 730–740 nm) to align with the hDPC activation spectrum, thereby enhancing photon delivery to the follicle niche and enabling irradiation at wavelengths that promote hDPC photoactivation. This non‑invasive, skin‑conformable textile‑based device exhibits mechanical resilience to repeated bending at a radius of 2 mm, low heat generation to prevent skin burns, and waterproof performance under water immersion. In vitro, NIR irradiation from the customized microcavity‑tuned OLED device significantly reduced senescence-associated β-galactosidase activity by 91.6% and increased hDPC migration, with greater effects than those observed for red light and broad full‑width at half‑maximum (FWHM) NIR irradiation groups. These findings suggest that microcavity-tuned textile-based NIR OLEDs can serve as scalable, biocompatible platforms for non-invasive wearable phototherapy aimed at hair-follicle modulation and future hair-loss management.
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Acknowledgements
This research was supported by grant from National R&D Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by Ministry of Science and ICT (2021M3C1C3097646), Technology Innovation Program (20017569, Development of substrate materials that can be stretched more than 50% for stretchable displays) funded by the Ministry of Trade, Industry & Energy (MOTIE, Korea), and funding from BK21 FOUR (Connected AI Education & Research Program for Industry and Society Innovation, KAIST EE, No. 4120200113769). YC acknowledges the financial supports from City University of Hong Kong (9380093). Portions of Fig. 1a were created in BioRender. Cho, E. (https://BioRender.com/k3zhjgq). Figure 6a was created in BioRender. Cho, E. (https://BioRender.com/5khq8e8) and (https://BioRender.com/avszulm).
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K.C.C. conceived the overall concept of this study, provided the experimental infrastructure, supervised the project, guided the overall experimental design. E.H.C. developed the device concept and experimental plan; designed, fabricated, and characterized the NIR OLED structures from microcavity devices to textile-integrated prototypes; performed optical simulations to design and optimize the NIR OLED structures; carried out LightTools-based Monte Carlo simulations to model the in vitro irradiation setup and skin-mimicking conditions; conducted the NIR OLED-based hair-loss phototherapy experiments and data analysis; and drafted and revised the manuscript. J.A. fabricated the textile platform and assisted in the fabrication and integration of the textile devices. Y.C. fabricated the NIR emitter materials and helped improve the clarity and natural flow of the manuscript.
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Cho, E.H., An, J., Chi, Y. et al. Wearable textile-based phototherapy platform with customized NIR OLEDs toward non-invasive hair loss treatment. Nat Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-68258-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-68258-3
