Materials RD NPL moots silver for wearable electronics

Materials RD NPL moots silver for wearable electronics

2013/07/30

UK researchers have found a way to chemically bond silver to cotton fibres to form conductive cloth which is being evaluated for wearable electronics.

“All the fibre is fully coated with nano metal particles attached to one another. The layer is 20nm in thickness, and it works on cotton cloth: both stretchable and non-stretchable,” National Physical Laboratory scientist Roya Ashayer-Soltani told Electronics Weekly.

This thickness does not stiffen the cloth significantly, and the process – which is being patented and has not been revealed yet – can be done to cloth, or fibres prior to cloth making. The lab has described it as “printing”.

“This technique could make integrating electronics into all types of clothing simple and practical. This has many potential applications in sports, health, medicine, consumer electronics and fashion,” claimed the lab.

Excessive stiffening can be an issue with printed conductive inks.

“It seems quite flexible. One of fabric companies we showed it to said they had never seen something with a conduction path that feels so much like a fabric,” said Ashayer-Soltani.

Does bending and stretching break the layer?

According to Ashayer-Soltani, conductivity is maintained during bending, but microscope analysis has yet to be done to determine how he layer is behaving.

20nm is not conductive enough to carry useful current. “It is not that low resistance,” she said. “Plating other metals on top to make 1.2µm reduces resistance to 0.1Ω/square, with not much added weight, and it is still quite flexible.”

Durability is always an issue with conductive cloth.

“We haven’t done wash tests yet but, since chemically bonded, it should be better than cloth made conductive by entrapment. People normally do entrapment,” said Ashayer-Soltani.

For reference, natural cotton fibres are somewhere around 12-20µm across, and cotton yarn is roughly 100-200µm diameter.

“The technique has many potential applications. Two particularly exciting areas are wearable sensors and antennas,” said project leader Chris Hunt. “It offers particular benefits over the ‘weaving in’ approach, as the conductive pattern and flexibility ensures that sensors are always positioned in the same location on the body.”

NPL is now looking for funding or collaborators to develop a full printed circuit on a textile, which can be tested for flexibility and robustness.

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