Soft capacitor fibers using conductive polymers for electronic textiles

A novel, highly flexible, conductive polymer-based fiber with high electric capacitance is reported. In its crossection the fiber features a periodic sequence of hundreds of conductive and isolating plastic layers positioned around metallic electrodes. The fiber is fabricated using fiber drawing method, where a multi-material macroscopic preform is drawn into a sub-millimeter capacitor fiber in a single fabrication step. Several kilometres of fibers can be obtained from a single preform with fiber diameters ranging between 500um -1000um. A typical measured capacitance of our fibers is 60-100 nF/m and it is independent of the fiber diameter. For comparison, a coaxial cable of the comparable dimensions would have only ~0.06nF/m capacitance. Analysis of the fiber frequency response shows that in its simplest interrogation mode the capacitor fiber has a transverse resistance of 5 kOhm/L, which is inversely proportional to the fiber length L and is independent of the fiber diameter. Softness of the fiber materials, absence of liquid electrolyte in the fiber structure, ease of scalability to large production volumes, and high capacitance of our fibers make them interesting for various smart textile applications ranging from distributed sensing to energy storage

Smart nanotextiles: materials and their application

Textiles are ubiquitous to us, enveloping our skin and surroundings. Not only do they provide a protective shield or act as a comforting cocoon but they also serve esthetic appeal and cultural importance. Recent technologies have allowed the traditional functionality of textiles to be extended. Advances in materials science have added intelligence to textiles and created ‘smart’ clothes. Smart textiles can sense and react to environmental conditions or stimuli, e.g., from mechanical, thermal, chemical, electrical, or magnetic sources (Lam Po Tang and Stylios 2006). Such textiles find uses in many applications ranging from military and security to personalized healthcare, hygiene, and entertainment. Smart textiles may be termed ‘‘passive’’ or ‘‘active.’’ A passive smart textile monitors the wearer’s physiology or the environment, e.g., a shirt with in-built thermistors to log body temperature over time. If actuators are integrated, the textile becomes an active, smart textile as it may respond to a particular stimulus, e.g., the temperature-aware shirt may automatically roll up the sleeves when body temperature rises. The fundamental components in any smart textile are sensors and actuators. Interconnections, power supply, and a control unit are also needed to complete the system. All these components must be integrated into textiles while still retaining the usual tactile, flexible, and comfortable properties that we expect from a textile. Adding new functionalities to textiles while still maintaining the look and feel of the fabric is where nanotechnology has a huge impact on the textile industry. This article describes current developments in materials for smart nanotextiles and some of the many applications where these innovative textiles are of great benefit

An enhanced power harvesting from woven textile using piezoelectric materials

The field of power harvesting has experienced significant growth over the past few years due to the ever-increasing desire to produce portable and wireless electronics with extended lifespans. The present work aims to introduce an approach to harvesting electrical energy from a mechanically excited piezoelectric element and investigates a power analytical model generated by a smart structure of type polyvinylidene fluoride(PVDF) that can be stuck onto fabrics and flexible substrates. Moreover, we report the effects of various substrates and investigates the sticking of these substrates on the characterization of the piezoelectric material

Research progress of flexible sensor and its interaction technology in force feedback electronic clothing

The sense in simulated reality is the key of human-computer interaction technology. Force feedback interaction technology is an important factor to realize simulated force sense in virtual reality. It can truly reproduce the physical information such as the mass, inertia and hardness of things in the virtual world. This paper summarizes the flexible sensors commonly used in force feedback technology and the development and research status of virtual reality wearable electronic clothing equipment based on force feedback technology, summarizes the principles of several force feedback structures, analyzes and compares their characteristics and main application fields. This paper briefly describes the prospect of force feedback technology, summarizes the trend of high-precision, multi-modal and multi-point interaction of force feedback equipment in the future, and puts forward some suggestions on miniaturization, softness and authenticity of force feedback technology in combination with the application characteristics of wearable electronic clothing