Smart Textile Circuitry and There Application

In olden days we are using the mechanical methods to measure or to control the processes these mechanical methods consumes more power and they produce more noise. The sensitivity, accuracy and the efficiency of these mechanical methods are less. The new developments in textiles leads to the incorporation of electronics in textiles. Especially the sensors are having the wide range of applications in textiles. It is found difficult to use the electronics in textiles because our textile yarns does not have conductivity. But after the invention of metallic yarns it is found easy to use electronic chips in textile materials. It leads to the development of smart textiles. Our paper mainly deals with the importance of conductive textiles, manufacturing techniques of textile based sensors produced by conductive textiles and we have also covered the technology of using electronics in garments and their applications.

Advanced Materials Technologies, 2019

users anywhere and anytime. E-textiles exploit the universality of textiles which covers all types of woven, nonwoven, and knitted materials/fabrics used in a huge variety of applications from clothing (e.g., fashion, workwear, and protective clothing), interior design (e.g., upholstery and carpets), agriculture (e.g., crop protection), civil engineering (e.g., soil retentions and reinforcement), marine (e.g., sails, inflatables, etc.) and industry (e.g., filters, lifting/conveying, etc.). The functionalization of clothing with electronic intelligence offers benefits in application domains including medical and healthcare, fashion, military, first responders, and workwear. [1,2] In all such applications, it is important that the functional electronics and materials are incorporated in a manner that does not significantly alter the physical properties of the fabric and, unlike previous examples, is invisible to the user. Fabrics are by their very nature highly compliant, soft, and typically breathable. These properties make fabrics ideally suited for clothing but they make them a very challenging medium on, or in, which electronic functionality must be incorporated. [3] This is in addition to the reliability/durability challenges presented by the abrasive, compressive, and tensile forces that the fabrics experience during normal use. The first generation of e-textile garments involved portable conventional electronics being inserted into pockets designed into clothing specifically for that purpose. The LifeShirt from Vivometrics [4] is an example of a commercialized product from 2001. In these first generation e-textiles, the textile itself played no role in the electronic functionality of the garment and the shirt itself was also heavy, uncomfortable, and unaesthetic. The second generation of e-textile garments include limited electronic functionality added in the form of woven or knitted conductive interconnects, [5-7] electrodes, [8,9] and antennas. [10,11] This generation also demonstrated e-textile prototypes that included sensing functionality such as temperature, heart rate, and gas sensors developed for firefighters within the Pro-eTEX project. [12] Commercial second generation products such as the Adidas heart rate monitoring sports bra [13,14] have also emerged. In all such examples, the electronic processing and wireless communications is performed in a conventional rigid module that snaps onto the garment and must be removed for washing. In the research domain, increased levels of electronic functionality has been demonstrated with minimal compromise on the properties of the fabric by the knitting, weaving, Practical wearable e-textiles must be durable and retain, as far as possible, the textile properties such as drape, feel, lightweight, breathability, and washability that make fabrics suitable for clothing. Early e-textile garments were realized by inserting standard portable electronic devices into bespoke pockets and arranging interconnects and cabling across the garment. In these examples, the textile merely served as a vehicle to house the electronics and had no inherent electronic functionality. A reduction in electronic component size, the development of flexible circuits, and the ability to weave robust interconnects offer the potential for improved levels of electronic integration within the textile. The weaving of electronic circuit filaments less than 2 mm wide into fabrics such that the electronics are fully concealed in the textile and given extra protection by the surrounding textile fibers is introduced. The failure mechanisms for different filament circuit designs before and after integration into the textile are investigated with a 90° cyclical bending test. Results show that encapsulated filament circuits embedded within the textile survive 45 washing cycles and more than 1500 cycles of 90° bending around a bending radius of 10 mm, performing five times better than equivalent filament circuits before integration into the fabric.

2004

The invention of the Jacquard weaving machine led to the concept of a stored "program" and "mechanized" binary information processing. This development served as the inspiration for C. Babbage's analytical engine-the precursor to the modern-day computer. Today, more than 200 years later, the link between textiles and computing is more realistic than ever. In this paper, we look at the synergistic relationship between textiles and computing and identify the need for their "integration" using tools provided by an emerging new field of research that combines the strengths and capabilities of electronics and textiles into one: electronic textiles, or e-textiles. E-textiles, also called smart fabrics, have not only "wearable" capabilities like any other garment, but also have local monitoring and computation, as well as wireless communication capabilities. Sensors and simple computational elements are embedded in e-textiles, as well as built into yarns, with the goal of gathering sensitive information, monitoring vital statistics, and sending them remotely (possibly over a wireless channel) for further processing. The paper provides an overview of existing efforts and associated challenges in this area, while describing possible venues and opportunities for future research.

2018

SURFACE FUNCTIONALIZATION OF FABRICS AND THREADS FOR SMART TEXTILES SEPTEMBER 2018 MORGAN L. BAIMA, B.A., ST. EDWARD’S UNIVERSITY M.A., UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN MADISON Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor Trisha L. Andrew The future of electronics is moving toward wearable devices and therefore requires a shift away from hard, inflexible materials towards fibers, threads, and fabrics that conform to the shape of the body. Therefore new methods for incorporating textiles as electronic components are needed to replace conventional processing techniques used with smooth, flat substrates like glass, silicon, and many polymers. Toward this end, this work investigates different methods that can be used to tune textile surfaces for electronic functionality, including weaving, solution grafting, and initiated chemical vapor deposition (iCVD). While all of these methods were used to make triboelectrically-active textiles, iCVD combined with simple solution chemis...

Printed Electronics - Current Trends and Applications, 2016

The authors concentrated their attention on the new area of research, concerning properties of electrically conductive textiles, produced by printing techniques. Such materials can be used for monitoring, for example, the rhythm of breathing. The aim of this study was to develop a sensor of strains for the needs of wearable electronics. A resistance-type sensor was made on a knitted fabric with shape memory, dedicated to monitor motor activity of human. The Weftloc knitted fabric shows elastic memory-thanks to the presence of elastomeric fibers. The dependence of sensoric properties of the Weftloc knitted fabric on the values of load, its increment rate, and its direction of action was tested. Mechanical parameters including total and elastic strain, elasticity degree, and strength were also assessed. The results indicate an anisotropic character of mechanical and sensoric behaviors of the sensor showing a particularly optimal behavior during diagonal loading. Electro-conductive properties have been imparted to the Weftloc fabric by chemical deposition of polypyrrole dopped with Cl ions. In addition, authors used as a carrier functional water dispersion of carbon nanotubes AquaCyl that was adapted in the Department of Material and Commodity Sciences and Textile Metrology for forming electrically conductive pathways by film printing method. It was assumed that the electrically conductive paths are sensitive to chemical stimuli. Studies of the effectiveness of the sensors for chemical stimuli were conducted for selected pairs of liquids. The best sensory properties were obtained for the methanol vapor-the relative resistance (R rel.) at the level above 40%. In the case of nonpolar liquid vapor, the sensoric sensitivity of the printed fabric was much lower, with R rel. level below 29%. Properties of the electrically conductive materials, such as thermal conductivity, electrical conductivity, and resistance to chemicals, allow for widely using them nanotechnology.