Smart

Textiles
Final Paper for class
TXMI 8120

Renuka
Smart Textiles
Smart textiles are defined as textiles that interact with their surroundings. According to
Langenhove and Hertleer (2004) smart textiles are referred to as those textiles that are able to
react and adapt to an environment stimuli. The origin of the stimulus and the response can be
either from an electrical, thermal, chemical or magnetic source. While interactive textiles have
an electronic device sewn into it and operated by an integrated control panel or button. These
textiles are a result of new market division arising from drop in material price and change in
clothing industry scenario with manufacturing of products for specific end uses. The market
demand for electrically facilitated smart fabrics and interactive textile technologies was
predicted to increase from US $340.0 million in 2005 to US $642.1 million by 2008 resulting in a
compound annual growth rate of 28.3% (Ohmatex smart textile technology; 2007). This
increase in demand for smart textiles can be attributed to it being more user- friendly,
providing more freedom to user and having more efficient services support.

Smart textiles are used for five functions that can be distinguished in an intelligent suit- sensor,
data processing, actuators, storage and communication. Usually an intelligent suit does not
contain all these functions combined together in it. The function itself is more intrinsic property
of the material and structure; therefore appropriate materials and structures that are
compatible with the function of clothing (such as comfortability, durability) are required
(Langenhove and Hertleer; 2004). An overview on possible applications with respect to
functionalities of smart textiles are listed in the table below (Reichl, Kallmayar and Linz; 2006)-

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Some examples of interactive textiles and their significance in day to day applications is listed in
the next table (Lauterbach and Jung; 2005)-

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Integration of electronics into textiles is an interdisciplinary field, and is a big challenge to
produce a seamless integration of the microelectronic devices for unobtrusive, active functional
textiles. The material selected will require to have good electrical properties in addition to it
being feasible during textile production, exhibit good interconnection properties and endurance
to daily activities it will be subjected to. The material generally includes polymers of conductive
properties that help conduct electric signals through them while preventing electrostatic
discharge from occurring. Textile conductors have characteristic features of a wire or that of
threads and are used in manufacturing fibers that can either be used in nonwoven construction
or in manufacturing yarns. Textile wires consist of a very thin wire spun loosely around a textile
thread that serves as a core. Textile thread is made of polyester or polyamide and is
diametrically ten times bigger than the wire which is between 20 and 80μm. Depending on the
application the wire can be made of nickel, copper, steel, silver coated copper wires with
isolated Kevlar coating (Lauterbach and Jung, 2005; Reichl, Kallmayer and Linz, 2006). The
mechanical, chemical and electrical properties vary with the core material, diameter of fiber,
coating and doping materials used. The combination of type of fiber and wire to be used is
decided based on the end application and other properties such as durability, flexibility, and
weight of the final fabric required.

The following pictures are of a metalized thread that can be woven, sewn or embroidered with
polyester or polyamide yarn (Reichl, Kallmayer and Linz, 2006)-

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Copper wire is considered as most suitable material for power and signal transmission due to its
high electrical conductivity property. To be used in textiles the copper wires are generally
coated with silver to improve its corrosion resistance.

Conductive fibers are either woven or embroidered to the surface of the textile fabric; weaving
produces straight line and is limited to rectangular structures alone while embroidery can be
used to create 2D forms similar to printed circuit boards (PCBs). Electrical contacts to the
conductive fibers are formed by crimping, soldering or by using conductive adhesives
depending on the size and flexibility of textile fabrics and silicon based microelectronic
integrated circuits (ICs) used in the fabric. Contact dimensions of ICs are approximately 80 to
100 microns and have a contact pitch of 160 to 200 microns (Lauterbach and Jung, 2005; Reichl,
Kallmayer and Linz, 2006).

An example of fabric integrated with conductive textiles (Lauterbach and Jung, 2005)-

Narrow polyester fabric contains several copper wires coated with silver; a laser is used to
remove the coating at contact points with the textile material to enable better electrical
connections. Wires exposed on the surface of the fabric are soldered to tiny contact plates and
the whole contact area is encapsulated using polyurethane adhesive for mechanical protection
of the conductor. For flexibility purpose PCB’s made of ultra-thin silicone chips are used instead
of conventional IC package. At thickness less than 50 microns these silicon chips are flexible like
foils but it stills remains a challenge to handle and mount these chips directly on the conductive
fibers, fix and encapsulate them in the textile environment.

The interconnect technology described above is used for incorporating small microelectronic
systems while for large area applications such as smart carpet requires interconnect
technologies with some modifications. Expensive technologies such as laser treatment cannot
be used for stripping insulating coatings but rather the silicon chips are fixed on a submount

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which bridges the gap between the contact pitch of the microelectronic module and that of the
conductive fibers in the textile fabric. Conventional soldering for mounting the chips on the
submount or the submount to the textile requires expensive flexible PCBs and therefore is not
used in large area applications. Instead the mounting is accomplished using conductive
adhesive (CA), anisotropic conductive adhesive (ACA) or non-conductive adhesive (NCA) along
with low cost submount substrates such as aluminium and PET laminates (Lauterbach and Jung,
2005).

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