Elevating Clothing to a Whole New Level with E-Textiles

Elevating Clothing to a Whole New Level with E-Textiles

From self-driving cars to virtual assistants, technology has been advancing at an exponential rate, and it’s not stopping anytime soon. One of the most exciting technological advancements in recent years has been the development of e-textiles. Imagine clothes that can do more than just cover your body. E-textiles are a type of wearable technology that can monitor your health, supply energy, and respond to changing environments, all while being integrated into the fabrics of your clothing. In this blog, we’ll delve into the fascinating world of e-textiles, exploring the different types of e-textiles and how they’re changing the game when it comes to wearable technology. So, let’s get started and discover the incredible potential of e-textiles.

Have you ever imagined that the shirt you are wearing can monitor your heart rate, or capable of powering your cell phone or it can heat up your body while you are in cold weather?

All these functions can be achieved if we perfectly integrate specific sensors, energy storage, and energy-harvesting device into the fabrics of your shirt.

It is believed that futuristic clothes would be e-textile-based, which will not only cover up your body but also be able to monitor health conditions, supply energy, and respond to changing environments.

An electronics textile or e-textile is a textile that is integrated with the electronics such as sensors, actuators, conductive thread, energy storage, energy harvesting device, and microcontrollers.

E-textiles are also known as conductive clothing, soft circuits, and electronic clothing. However, it must clarify that an e-textile is different from a smart textile, or smart fabric which is a textile that responds to external stimuli such as temperature, pressure, chemicals, and mechanical stimuli but doesn’t essentially have an electronic device.

For example, thermochromic textile is a smart textile that can changes colour with temperature but does not integrate an electronic device.

Types of E-Textiles

There are four different types of e-textile and their definition are summarised as follows;

1. Passive e-textile: Textiles that can sense stimuli or environmental conditions are called passive e-textile. For example, sensors integrated textiles can sense signals from environmental conditions, including those utilized in pressure, temperature, chemicals, and heart-rate measurements.
2. Active e-textile: Textiles that can sense and reacts to stimuli or environmental conditions are called active e-textile. The materials integrated with the textiles can have the functionality of passive textiles and react to that external stimuli.
3. Smart e-textile: A textile that can detect, respond, and adopts itself to changes in stimuli and environmental conditions is called a smart e-textile.
4. Intelligent e-textile: A textile that responds to perform functions in a manual and pre-programmed manner and it is associated with advanced processing, artificial intelligence, and machine learning.

The e-textile research gained momentum with the discovery of a fully animated sweatshirt in 1985 by Harry Wainwright. Although conducting metal embroidered garments is known from the ancient age. During the mid-1990s, a group of MIT researchers including Steve Mann, Thad Starner, and Sandy Pentland embarked on the creation of what they referred to as ‘wearable computers’. However, advanced e-textile is a relatively new area of research and is highly demanded in society because of their important applications in various fields (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Possible applications of wearable e-textile in different fields

Possible Applications of E-Textiles

1. Defense: Tracking the position and status of soldiers in the work field. If soldiers wear the e-textile-based jacket and shot at the battlefield, the e-textile materials can sense the bullet’s impact and can easily send a radio message to the soldier’s base. E-textile can also monitor the health of the soldiers during working in the fields. It can also be used to create camouflage clothing that changes colour to match the surrounding environment.
2. Healthcare: Stain, Pressure, and Temperature sensor integrated e-textile clothing can monitor vital human signs such as respiration rate, pulse rate, temperature, and fatigue. The recent result also shows that electrocardiograms can be made using e-textile which can monitor human heart conditions in real-time. Patients can possibly leave hospitals sooner and still receive careful monitoring from their doctors as medical data collected by e-textile can be shared with healthcare providers online.
3. Sports: By utilizing e-textiles, it is possible to keep track of biometric information, such as heart rate, body temperature, and sweat levels, and transmit this data wirelessly to coaches and trainers. This data can then be utilized to monitor the health and performance of athletes. It can also assist them to improve their form and technique. By customizing e-textiles, it is feasible to offer targeted support and compression to particular regions of the body. This feature can help decrease the likelihood of injuries occurring during training or competitive events.
4. Energy Harvesting and Storage: Energy harvesting and storage device must be integrated with the textile to develop a self-sustainable independent e-textile system. Integrated energy harvester devices can harvest energy from different energy generation mechanisms such as solar, thermal, mechanical, and biochemical. The harvested energy can directly run the e-textile system or it can be stored in textile-based energy storage systems such as supercapacitors for future uses.   
5. Robotics: E-textiles can also be used as actuators to create motion or force in robotic systems. The e-textiles-based energy storage system can provide a lightweight and flexible power source for robotic systems. E-textiles can be used to create wearable antennas and communication systems that can be integrated into robotic systems. E-textiles can also be used to create wearable sensors and feedback systems that enable human-robot interaction.
6. Personal protective (PPE): The sensors and wireless communication system integrated with a personal protective costume can monitor internal and outside body conditions. A real-time recording system can be integrated into the e-textile to track the outside condition.
7. Transportation: The mechanical frame strength of transportation such as trains, aircraft, cars, and ships, can be continuously monitored for safety using e-textile-based strain sensors. Truck driver fatigue can be monitored using sensors integrated e-textile.
8. Entertainment: Musical keyboards with pressure-sensitive keys, pressure-sensitive drum kits and electric guitars can be integrated into the fabrics. Light-orientated dartboards and dance mats can be linked to TVs and MP3 players in the garments.

Materials used for E-Textiles

Conventionally, conducting fabrics/yarn can prepare by coating with metal such as silver, gold, copper, and conducting metal oxide. However, metal-coated conducting fabrics are costly, have low flexibility, are nonbiodegradable, some metals are toxic, and easily damaged after a few times washings.

The conducting polymers such as polythiophene, and poly (3,4-ethylene dioxythiophene) polystyrene sulfonate (PEDOT: PSS) is also integrated into the fabrics or yarns to achieve promising e-textile properties.

Recently conducting nanocarbon-based e-textile are very popular due to their high conductivity, flexibility, lightweight, ease of the process, no or less toxicity, high surface area, and better sensing properties.

The conducting nano carbons such as graphene and carbon nanotube are widely used in e-textile. Moreover, nanocarbon composites are also used to achieve enhanced and additional functionalities in the e-textile.

The e-textile fabrication process can be done by weaving, knitting, embroidery, coating, and printing.

Figure 2: (a) Global consumption of materials used in e-textile and (b) Global e-textile and smart clothing market predicted from 2020-2028.

Future Demand and Market

The market forecast for e-textile and smart clothing is estimated to reach USD 15 billion by 2028. However, most of the developed e-textile products are prototypes and are still not fully available in the market. However, Google and Levi’s have jointly developed the project ‘jacquard’ which is a textile-based technology that assesses smartphones and other gadgets with the camera, music, media, and text. Commuter™ Trucker Jacket is a product that also provides digital services with the help of simple touch gestures and has a wireless connection via Bluetooth. Moreover, many companies such as Saint Laurent, Adidas, VR Electronics, DuPont, and H&M Foundation are actively working on the commercialization of e-textile products. 

Challenges

Despite achieving promising properties and functions of e-textile, still there are various challenges associated to use it in real-life applications.

One of the major issues in e-textile is making strong and stable bonding between conducting materials and fabrics, fibers, or yarns so that after several times washing e-textile must exhibit promising functions. The scalable production of e-textile is need to be focused on.

The electronics-integrated textile must be comfortable for the wearer and maintain appearance. The powering of e-textile devices using traditional batteries is also an issue.

Conclusion

The e-textile is an emerging cutting-edge technology that can be useful in taking care of human health, safety, comfortableness, entertainment, and fashion. E-textile will play a significant role in the economy in near future. Although significant development in e-textile is needed to commercialize e-textile-based products. Therefore, a significant R&D investment is needed for the future development of e-textile products. Making sustainable e-textile is also a crucial step for future development. ATIRA has been working on research and development of graphene-based e-textile.  

References

1. A. Komolafe et al., E-Textile Technology Review from Materials to Application, IEEE Access 2021, 9, 97152.
2. K. Du et al., Electronic Textiles for Energy, Sensing, and Communication, iScience 2022, 25, 104174.
3. C. Ye et al., Design and Fabrication of Silk Templated Electronic Yarns and Applications in Multifunctional Textiles, Matter 2019, 1, 1411.
4. A. Libanori et al., Smart Textiles for Personalized Healthcare, Nature Electronics 2022, 5, 142.
5. M. Dulal et al., Toward Sustainable Wearable Electronic Textiles, ACS Nano 2022, 16, 19755.