TXQ301

Electronic Textile
Submitted by:
Krishna Mohan Chauhan
Objective and hypothesis:

Use of traditional textile and clothing technology with the modern and advance branches of
science like electronics for development of textile product having additional facility like
sensing, data processing and data storage capacity, communication facility and actuation
etc.
Development of unobtrusive electronic devices, sensor, batteries and solar cells fully
integrated at the fiber/polymer level or built into polymer structure to enhance functionalities
in existing product and spawn new products.

Methodology

Conducting fibers have been used to produce fiber used in electromagnetic shielding and
electrostatic charge dissipation. Also used for many thermal applications.
Electrical circuit are built into a textile substrate to produce electronic textile.
Fabrication of electric circuit on woven fabrics to act as antenna for transmission and
receipt signals.
Interactive textile in application of data transfer structure, stretch sensing and press
sensing structure. Woven fabric network with integrated sensing element have been
designed to act as sensing device.
Conducting polymer are being developed to act as wearable energy system. Fabric
batteries and photovoltaic have been used as energy storage device and incorporated in
textile membrane

Results and description

Electromagnetic induction shielding: Fabric containing conducting fiber or
coated with conducting polymers, like polyaniline and polyacetyline, provide effective shielding
from radiated electromagnetic interference. It is found that a layered arrangement of metalized
textile sheets which are separated by insulating layer are used for screening electromagnetic
waves in the broad range for 10MHz to 1000 GHz

Static charge Dissipation: Researchers have found that the conducting fabric can
be used for static charge dissipation. This has been shown by developing a computer model to
explain the process of dissipation of electrostatic charge from fabric containing conductive
fibers.

Thermal application: Conductive fibers are being used as thermal application. It is

based on the principle of resistive heating of the conductive element i.e. when electric current
flow through the conductor, there is heat loss due to resistance of the conductive material. In

this case conducting yarn act as heating source and provide uniform distribution of heat
throughout the entire fabric.

Circuit and Circuit boards:

Lot of circuit have been developed in the field of textile electronics. Textile based circuitry is
one of them. It has resulted in fabricating fabric keyboards, pressure sensors etc. It is also
found that in the application of conducting threads to electronics has been used in attempt to
form network of conducting threads in a fabric by weaving or knitting method. Electrically or
optically conducting fibers are arranged and woven in a particular matter so as to transmit
electrical or optical signal from one part of fabric to other for communication between
difference devices placed on a fabric.

A communicative wristwatch is integrated into circuit into the woven wristband. The
wristband has a conductive and non-conductive fibers woven which are orthogonal to one
another to form a grid. The conductive fiber provides wired coupling between the electronic
unit and power source and with all other sources attached with wristband.

Fabrication of electrical circuit in woven fabrics result into formation of interconnect and
disconnect at crossover point in woven circuits. Which is primarily done by resistance
welding. This is of two kind top bottom probe welding and parallel gap welding.

Sensing devices and system:

A conducting fabric based tactile sensor system in which a garment made from a multilayer
sensing fabric covers the entire body of robot. This fabric helps the robot to sense whenever
any object or human being touches it. Fully integrated fabric based tactile sensor in this
sensor suit are distributed on the entire body of the robot and a network of conducting fiber
conveys sensed signal to sensor processor.

Strain sensing using textile sensing has been resulted in many applications like motion
sensing and physiological monitoring. It is a kind of press sensing structure works on the
principle of pressure sensitivity.

Stretch sensing structure:- Due to stretch, electronic property changes and due to this
change in structure, conductivity also changes eg. A staple fiber it contains a metal fiber, if
the yarn is stretched the metal filaments are brought close together and the resistance
decreases.

A sleeve that is capable of sensing body posture. This is done by using concept of fabric
strain. To determine the surface strain field induced by movement, a printed carbon filled
rubber layers is used as sensor

Sensing devices and system which are compatible with textiles (or something textile based)
for continuous monitoring of physiological and behavioral parameter for health care have
been seen. In all these case there is use of functionalized material enabled design and

fabrication of sensor and electrodes. Use of elastic fabrics coated with carbon loaded rubber
to monitor respiratory changes have also been reported.

Garments with capabilities to continuous monitor the wearers biomedical information and
body vital signs, environmental condition, and garment penetration by a ballistic material
have also been resulted.

Soft switches can be used for occupancy sensing based on seat pressure mapping for fabric
control surface in automotive, airlines, home furnishing and floors.

Fabric based motor sensor for the seat of motor vehicle has been reported. This sensor
included a compressible, foam layer disposed between two conductive fabric layer.

GPS system have been integrated to optical fiber based chemical and biological sensor into
uniform of soldier

A detection of the presence of organophosphate dimethyl phosphate gas by the help of

miniature chemical sensor.

Energy storage:
Power supply is an essential component of electronic textile products. Development of non

women fabric battery electrode to store energy which uses conductive fiber to form a porus
mat, which is used as negative electrode for a hydrogen storage shell.
Conductive polymers are being developed for wearable energy storage system. These
fabrics batteries and photovoltaics have been developed using ionic liquid electrolyte that
could be incorporated into textile membrane
Development of flexible and comfortable solar cells. This is done on polymeric films and
woven fabrics by coating these substrates with organic dye molecule and titanium oxide.
The mixture of organic dye molecule and titanium dioxide nano-particle is sandwiched
between two conductive electrodes

Outcome and analysis:

Y The textile based metallized sheets which was used for electromagnetic shielding are
flexible and comfortable, have elastic properties and attenuate the electromagnetic radiation
in transmission by 30-40 dB. A fabric from conducting yarn that guarantees a shielding of
20-40 dB against electromagnetic radiation at a frequency of 10 GHz.

Conducting fibers are being used for many thermal applications like flexible heating pads,
electrical heating blankets and jackets that are stainless steel microfibers based on the
principle of resistive heating of conductive elements. A heating jackets is developed with
electrical wires integrated into jacket.
Electrical circuits are built on textile substrate using printing techniques.

In designing fabric based circuit crosstalk noise comes in picture, the magnitude of crosstalk
noise increased as the spacing between the conducting lines decreased
Sensing of human physiological sign with respect to the change in the environmental
parameter have been seen using conducting fabric based tactile sensor system.
A sensor system is developed in life shirt system which is used to collect physiological data
of patients without affecting their normal routine. A sensor which is used as GPS in soldiers
suit have sensor which include replacing the cladding material of the optical fibers with
active materials like polypyrrole and polyaniline.
Sensor are also used as source of energy. The source of energy are instance body heat,
mechanical motion (elastic from deformation of the fabrics, kinetic from body motion),
radiation etc.
Fabric based electrode have been used to form a flexible and comfortable battery system.
These textiles based electrode were formed by coating conducting polymeric material on
fabrics.
It is used as construction kit like lilypad Arduino, Fabric kit, aniomagic, Flora, Gemma,
Fibretronic connected wear
Electronic textiles has benefit like it is flexible, no wire to snag environment, large surface
area for sensing, invisible to others and cheap manufacturing etc.

Future work: In future the field of electronic textile would involve attachment of electronic
devices, sensor etc. to conductive element integrated into a textile to form flexible electronic
products. The washing and cleaning challenge of wearable textile suit is also need to be take
care off. In long run, the power supply will be built into the structure of fiber and yarn. In future
the electroactive materials are likely to be incorporated into textile structure to make it adoptive
and responsive to allow for shape and structure modification.

References:

http://nopr.niscair.res.in/bitstream/123456789/24504/1/IJFTR%2031(1)%20170-176.pdf
https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:876879/FULLTEXT01.pdf
http://www.ijettjournal.org/volume-16/number-8/IJETT-V16P274.pdf
http://hb.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:887282/FULLTEXT01
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-textiles