Bioengineered Textiles and Nonwovens – the convergence of bio-miniaturisation and electroactive conductive polymers for assistive healthcare, portable power and design-led wearable technology

Today, there is an opportunity to bring together creative design activities to exploit the responsive and adaptive ‘smart’ materials that are a result of rapid development in electro, photo active polymers or OFEDs (organic thin film electronic devices), bio-responsive hydrogels, integrated into MEMS/NEMS devices and systems respectively. Some of these integrated systems are summarised in this paper, highlighting their use to create enhanced functionality in textiles, fabrics and non-woven large area thin films. By understanding the characteristics and properties of OFEDs and bio polymers and how they can be transformed into implementable physical forms, innovative products and services can be developed, with wide implications. The paper outlines some of these opportunities and applications, in particular, an ambient living platform, dealing with human centred needs, of people at work, people at home and people at play. The innovative design affords the accelerated development of intelligent materials (interactive, responsive and adaptive) for a new product & service design landscape, encompassing assistive healthcare (smart bandages and digital theranostics), ambient living, renewable energy (organic PV and solar textiles), interactive consumer products, interactive personal & beauty care (e-Scent) and a more intelligent built environment

Electrical conductivity of carbon nanofiber reinforced resins: potentiality of Tunneling Atomic Force Microscopy (TUNA) technique

Epoxy nanocomposites able to meet pressing industrial requirements in the field of structural material have been developed and characterized. Tunneling Atomic Force Microscopy (TUNA), which is able to detect ultra-low currents ranging from 80 fA to 120 pA, was used to correlate the local topography with electrical properties of tetraglycidyl methylene dianiline (TGMDA) epoxy nanocomposites at low concentration of carbon nanofibers (CNFs) ranging from 0.05% up to 2% by wt. The results show the unique capability of TUNA technique in identifying conductive pathways in CNF/resins even without modifying the morphology with usual treatments employed to create electrical contacts to the ground

In-situ production of electrically conductive polyaniline fibres from polymer blends

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.Polymers and polymer-based composite materials with electro-conductive properties, respectively, are materials with several potential applications. New materials are being offered in every area and novel products are constantly being introduced. Among these new materials, composites made of electro-conductive monofilaments and insulating polymers are nowadays being used as antistatic materials in the carpets and textiles industries. One promising approach for the manufacture of this kind of material is to generate the electrically conductive fibres in-situ, that is, during the actual forming process of the component. The main objective of this project was to establish the feasibility of producing electrically conductive polyaniline (PANI) fibres within a suitable polymer matrix by means of the development of a suitable processing strategy, which allows the fabrication of an anisotropically conducting composite. It is remarkable, however, that layered structures of the conducting filler were also formed within the matrix material. The latter morphology, particularly observed in compression moulded specimens of a specific polymer system, was also in good agreement with that inferred by means of a mathematical model. Experimentation was carried out with three different PANI conductive complexes (PANIPOLTM). They were initially characterised, which assisted in the identification of the most suitable material to be deformed into fibres. Preliminary processing was carried out with the selected PANIPOLTM complex, which was blended with polystyrene-polybutadiene-polystyrene (SBS), low density polyethylene (LDPE) and polypropylene (PP), respectively. The resultant blends were formed by ram extrusion, using a capillary die, to induce the deformation of the conducting phase into fibres. The morphological analysis performed on the extrudates suggested that the most suitable polymer matrix was SBS. Further experimentation was carried out with the polymer system selected. The relationships between the content of conductive complex in the composites and their electrical conductivity and microstructure were established. The blends were compression moulded and they displayed a morphology of layered domains of the conducting phase within the SBS matrix. The behaviour of the conductivity with respect to the PANIPOLTM complex in the compression moulded blends was found to be characteristic of a percolating system with a threshold as low as 5 weight percent of the conducting filler in the blends. The morphological analysis performed on the extruded blends suggested that the conducting phase was deformed into elongated domains, aligned parallel to the extrusion direction, which in some cases displayed a considerable degree of continuity and uniformity. The level of electrical conductivity in the extrudates was considerably lower than that of their corresponding non-extruded blends. This was attributed to a lack of continuity in the conducting elongated domains produced in-situ within the SBS matrix. Percolation theory and a generalisation of effective media theories were used to model the behaviour of the conductivity with respect to the content of PANIPOLTM in the compression moulded blends. Both approaches yielded similar values for the critical parameters, which were also in good agreement with the percolation threshold experimentally observed. The results of the modelling suggested that, at the percolation threshold, the morphology of the composite may consists of aggregates of flattened polyaniline particles forming very long layered structures within the SBS matrix, which is in agreement with the results of the morphological analysis

Polypyrrole Coated PET Fabrics for Thermal Applications

Polypyrrole can be chemically synthesized on PET fabrics, giving rise to textiles with high electric conductivity. These textiles are suitable for several applications from antistatic films to electromagnetic interference shielding devices. Here we discuss the thermal-electric performance and the heat generation of polypyrrole coated PET fabric samples, previously studied because of their electric conductivity and electromagnetic interference shielding effectiveness. The measured Seebeck effect is comparable with that of metallic thermocouples. Since polypyrrole shows extremely low thermal diffusivities regardless of the electrical conductivity, the low thermal conductivity gives significant advantage to the thermoelectric figure-of-merit ZT, comparable with that of some traditional inorganic thermoelectric materials. The heat generation is also investigated for possible heating textile devices. The results confirm polypyrrole as a prom- ising material for thermal electric applications due to its easy preparation in low cost processin

Efficient design of piezoresitive sensors based on carbon black conductive composites

Flexible and stretchable sensors are widely investigated taking into account their potential for wearable electronics, such as electronic skin, healthcare monitoring, human-machine interfaces, and soft robotics. In this contribution, highly sensitive conductive polymer composites (CPCs) for piezoresistive sensing are summarized, considering a straightforward manufacturing process based on extrusion of thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) and/or olefin block copolymer (OBC), carbon black (CB), and additionally polyethylene-octene elastomer (POE) grafted with maleic anhydride (POE-g-MA). The design of the formulation variables is successfully performed to enable both low and high strain sensing, as highlighted by both static and dynamic testing

A liquid crystal based contact lens display using PEDOT: PSS and obliquely evaporated SiO2

An active spherically conformed liquid crystal cell is presented comprising PEDOT:PSS as a transparent conductive layer and obliquely evaporated SiO2 as an alignment layer. To tackle compatibility issues with the SU8 processing needed for the spacers, an additional buffer layer was included in the fabrication process. The electro-optic response is inspected closely and a contrast measurement is given

Tactile Sensors Based on Conductive Polymers

This paper presents results from a selection of tactile sensors that have been designed and fabricated. These sensors are based on a common approach that consists in placing a sheet of piezoresistive material on the top of a set of electrodes. We use a thin film of conductive polymer as the piezoresistive mate¬rial. Specifically, a conductive water-based ink of this polymer is deposited by spin coating on a flexible plastic sheet, giving it a smooth, homogeneous and conducting thin film. The main interest in this procedure is that it is cheap and it allows the fabrication of flexible and low cost tactile sensors. In this work we present results from sensors made using two technologies. Firstly, we have used a flexible Printed Circuit Board (PCB) technology to fabricate the set of electrodes and addressing tracks. The result is a simple, flexible tactile sensor. In addition to these sensors on PCB, we have proposed, designed and fabricated sensors with screen printing technology. In this case, the set of electrodes and addressing tracks are made by printing an ink based on silver nanoparticles. The intense characterization provides us insights into the design of these tactile sensors.This work has been partially funded by the spanish government under contract TEC2006-12376-C02

Silicon-organic hybrid electro-optical devices

Organic materials combined with strongly guiding silicon waveguides open the route to highly efficient electro-optical devices. Modulators based on the so-called silicon-organic hybrid (SOH) platform have only recently shown frequency responses up to 100 GHz, high-speed operation beyond 112 Gbit/s with fJ/bit power consumption. In this paper, we review the SOH platform and discuss important devices such as Mach-Zehnder and IQ-modulators based on the linear electro-optic effect. We further show liquid-crystal phase-shifters with a voltage-length product as low as V pi L = 0.06 V.mm and sub-mu W power consumption as required for slow optical switching or tuning optical filters and devices