Although market prediction for smart textiles in the coming years is high, their washability will be among the main criteria for their mass adoption. Hence, the need to understand precisely how the ...washing process can damage them. Therefore, the best care instructions can be determined and serve as guidelines for smart textile manufacturers to control the quality of their smart garments as well as their customers to wash them cautiously. In this study, only the sensing part, silver-plated-nylon electrode sensors, is taken into account. To determine the chemical and the mechanical impacts of the machine-washing process separately and simultaneously, textile electrodes were put in different washing conditions: with and without bleaching agents, with and without mechanical constraints, etc. Then spectrophotometry, Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and Thermogravimetric Analysis (TGA) were used to characterize these electrodes. Results show that liquid detergents should be preferred to powder ones. Indeed, the latter contain bleaching agents that tend to oxidize the silver layer, making it more vulnerable to the mechanical rubbings that tear off the silver layer progressively washes after washes. As a consequence, the silver-plated-nylon loses rapidly its conductivity so that the electrode is no longer able to sense biopotentials.
Smart Textiles and Their Applications outlines the fundamental principles of applied smart textiles, also reporting on recent trends and research developments. Scientific issues and proposed ...solutions are presented in a rigorous and constructive way that fully presents the various results, prototypes, and case-studies obtained from academic and industrial laboratories worldwide. After an introduction to smart textiles and their applications from the editor, Part One reviews smart textiles for medical purposes, including their use in health monitoring, treatment delivery, and assistive technologies. Part Two covers smart textiles for transportation and energy, with chapters covering smart textiles for the monitoring of structures and processes, as well as smart textiles for energy generation. The final section considers smart textiles for protection, security, and communication, and includes chapters covering electrochromic textile displays, textile antennas, and smart materials for personal protective equipment. * Scientific issues and proposed solutions are presented in a rigorous and constructive way regarding various results, prototypes, and case-studies obtained from academic and industrial laboratories worldwide * Useful for researchers and postgraduate students, and also for existing companies and start-ups that are developing products involving smart textiles * Authored and edited by an international team who are experts in the field ensure comprehensive coverage and global relevance
This review summarizes the recent developments and importance of wearable electronic textiles in the past decade. Wearable electronic textiles are an emerging interdisciplinary research area that ...requires new design approaches. This challenging interdisciplinary research field brings together specialists in electronics, information technology, microsystems, and textiles to make an innovation in the development of wearable electronic products. Wearable electronic textiles play a key role among various technologies (clothing, communication, information, healthcare monitoring, military, sensors, magnetic shielding, etc.). In this review, applications of wearable electronic textiles are described, including an investigation of their fabrication techniques. This review highlights the basic processes, possible applications, and main materials to build wearable E‐textiles and combines the fundamentals of E‐textiles for the readers who have different backgrounds. Moreover, reliability, reusability, and efficiency of wearable electronic textiles are discussed together with the opportunities and drawbacks of the wearable E‐textiles that are addressed in this review article.
Conventional textile structures are converted to functional surfaces and materials. From those materials, smart and wearable electronic apparels are created, which become a source of artificial intelligence and big data. The current status of wearable electronic textiles and their fabrication techniques are presented together with their impacts, drawbacks, challenges, and possible application areas.
Around 15% of children still wet their bed after five years old. Although bedwetting alarms have proven to be effective to achieve nighttime dryness, they are cumbersome so children could be ...reluctant to use them. Therefore, the moisture sensor and wire were made unobtrusive by seamlessly integrated them into fully textile underwear by using conductive yarns. Consequently, the alarm acceptability should be enhanced by improving children's comfort. Three conductive textile metallic yarns, made of silver or stainless steel, were considered to fabricate the urine leakage sensor. Silver-plated-nylon yarn, which showed the highest electrical conductivity, outperformed the stainless-steel yarns regarding its ability to detect urine leakage as well as its detection speed. Furthermore, it was proven to withstand multiple urine soakings and the following machine-washings, even at high temperature (60 °C). However, the electrical current, necessary to detect the leakage, tends to corrode the silver. Therefore, the detection circuit was adapted. Eventually, the designed leakage sensor was seamlessly integrated into a child's trunk underwear, into which a miniaturized alarm can be plugged. The resulting textile underwear aims at replacing the rigid alarm system currently available, hence improving the quality of life of enuretic children and help them achieving nighttime dryness.
This study presents the development and evaluation of an innovative intelligent garment system, incorporating 3D knitted silver biopotential electrodes, designed for long-term sports monitoring. By ...integrating advanced textile engineering with wearable monitoring technologies, we introduce a novel approach to real-time physiological signal acquisition, focusing on enhancing athletic performance analysis and fatigue detection. Utilizing low-resistance silver fibers, our electrodes demonstrate significantly reduced skin-to-electrode impedance, facilitating improved signal quality and reliability, especially during physical activities. The garment system, embedded with these electrodes, offers a non-invasive, comfortable solution for continuous ECG and EMG monitoring, addressing the limitations of traditional Ag/AgCl electrodes, such as skin irritation and signal degradation over time. Through various experimentation, including impedance measurements and biosignal acquisition during cycling activities, we validate the system’s effectiveness in capturing high-quality physiological data. Our findings illustrate the electrodes’ superior performance in both dry and wet conditions. This study not only advances the field of intelligent garments and biopotential monitoring, but also provides valuable insights for the application of intelligent sports wearables in the future.
A medical quality electrocardiogram (ECG) signal is necessary for permanent monitoring, and an accurate heart examination can be obtained from instrumented underwear only if it is equipped with ...high-quality, flexible, textile-based electrodes guaranteeing low contact resistance with the skin. The main objective of this article is to develop reliable and washable ECG monitoring underwear able to record and wirelessly send an ECG signal in real time to a smart phone and further to a cloud. The article focuses on textile electrode design and production guaranteeing optimal contact impedance. Therefore, different types of textile fabrics were coated with modified poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):poly(styrenesulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS) in order to develop and manufacture reliable and washable textile electrodes assembled to female underwear (bras), by sewing using commercially available conductive yarns. Washability tests of connected underwear containing textile electrodes and conductive threads were carried out up to 50 washing cycles. The influence of standardized washing cycles on the quality of ECG signals and the electrical properties of the textile electrodes were investigated and characterized.
This paper presents the production and the characterization of the multi-walled carbon nanotube (MWCNT) printed flexible temperature sensors for high-precision reading in temperature sensing ...applications. The temperature sensor was fabricated using the inkjet printing method by depositing carbon nanotube (CNT) ink on soft taffeta fabric. An aqueous CNT-based conductive ink was formulated for the inkjet printing process. A translucent polyurethane (PU) welding tape was used as an encapsulation layer on the surface of the sensors to protect sensors from various environmental effects during usage and testing. The fabricated sensors function as thermistors, as the conductivity increases with temperature linearly. The performances of differently patterned three temperature sensors were compared. The highest obtained temperature coefficient of resistance (TCR) and the thermal index are −1.04%/°C and 1135 K, respectively. The fabricated sensors possess a high-temperature sensitivity between room temperature and 50 °C and perform better than the typical commercial platinum temperature sensors and most of the recently reported CNT-based temperature sensors in the literature.
Smart and e-textiles have nowadays an important increasing place in the garment industry. The rise of embedded telecommunications, especially smartphones in our pocket, enables us to provide a power ...source and a wireless link for smart textiles. The main issue is to develop garments able to receive power from smartphones and communicate with them without flexibility and comfort constraints bound to embedded solid-state electronic components. Consequently, this article aims to develop a fully textile NFC combiner to transfer data and power between a smartphone and sensors without any electronic components. It precisely describes textile NFC multiple combiners composed of textile NFC antennas linked by two-wire transmission lines. Also, theoretical analysis, simulations, and experiments have been conducted to adapt the resonant frequency of such structures to the NFC technology (13.56 MHz). Finally, our article generalizes textile NFC combiner resonant frequency equations for multiple combiners with any number of antennas.
Reliability and washability are major hurdles facing the e-textile industry nowadays. The main fear behind the product's rejection is the inability to ensure its projected life span. The durability ...of e-textiles is based on an approximate lifetime of both the electronics and textiles integrated into the product. A detailed analysis of the wash process and the possibility of predicting product behavior are key factors for new standards implementation. This manuscript is focused on the washability issues of different types of woven, knitted, and embroidered, textile-based ECG electrodes. These electrodes are used without the addition of any ionic gel to the skin to reduce impedance. They were subjected to up to 50 wash cycles with two different types of wash processes, and changes in surface resistance, as well as the quality of ECG waves, were observed To investigate the wash damages in detail, the proposed mechanical (Martindale and Pilling box) and chemical test methods were investigated. The electrodes which increased resistance after washing showed the same trend in the proposed test methods. Copper-based electrodes suffered the most severe damage and increased resistance, as was also visible in an SEM analysis. These proposed test methods can be used to predict robustness behavior without washing.
(1) Background: millions of people, from children to the elderly, suffer from bladder dysfunctions all over the world. Monitoring bladder fullness with appropriate miniaturized textile devices can ...improve, significantly, their daily life quality, or even cure them. Amongst the existing bladder sensing technologies, bioimpedance spectroscopy seems to be the most appropriate one to be integrated into textiles. (2) Methods: to assess the feasibility of monitoring the bladder fullness with textile-based bioimpedance spectroscopy; an innovative lab-bench has been designed and fabricated. As a step towards obtaining a more realistic pelvic phantom, ex vivo pig's bladder and skin were used. The electrical properties of the fabricated pelvic phantom have been compared to those of two individuals with tetrapolar impedance measurements. The measurements' reproducibility on the lab bench has been evaluated and discussed. Moreover, its suitability for the continuous monitoring of the bladder filling has been investigated. (3) Results: although the pelvic phantom failed in reproducing the frequency-dependent electrical properties of human tissues, it was found to be suitable at 5 kHz to record bladder volume change. The resistance variations recorded are proportional to the conductivity of the liquid filling the bladder. A 350 mL filling with artificial urine corresponds to a decrease in resistance of 7.2%, which was found to be in the same range as in humans. (4) Conclusions: based on that resistance variation; the instantaneous bladder fullness can be extrapolated. The presented lab-bench will be used to evaluate the ability of textiles electrodes to unobtrusively monitor the bladder volume.
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