Development of smart textiles is an emerging discipline in the last two decades where a conductive element is integrated into a textile material by some means. The purpose of this research was to develop a conductive textile fabric by coating with charcoal as a conductive element. The charcoal was produced by carbonizing the eucalyptus wood at a temperature of 928 °C for 37 min producing 59.17% w/w of fixed carbon yield and conductivity of 463.34 Sm−1 (Siemens per meter) compared to immeasurable conductivity of the wood. This was followed by characterization of physical and chemical properties of charcoal. Thereafter, a cotton fabric was pad-coated with a dispersion based on the charcoal. The paper herein reports the results of preparing different recipes using different quantities of charcoal particles with other components of the coating mixture, which was tested to obtain the best coating in terms of electrical conductivity. The optimal concentration of the conductive particles of the charcoal was studied. Performance evaluation of the coated fabric was assessed for the durability of fabric towards different fastness agents. The effect of charcoal loading on thermal and sensorial comfort of the fabric in addition to the air and water permeability was studied and a significant change was observed. Finally, a proof of concept was developed to demonstrate if the resulting pieces of information during the process were viable. As observed, the pad-coated cotton fabric using charcoal showed increased electrical conductivity from 1.58 × 10−12 Scm−1 (Siemens per centimeter) for the controlled sample to 124.49 Scm−1 for the coated sample designating that the resulting fabric is in a conductor category.

Electronic yarns contain electronic components which are fully embedded into the conductive yarn’s structure before manufacturing smart textile garments or fabrics. To accept comprehensively the electronic textiles, it is essential to integrate the electronic components into/onto the conductive textile yarn without compromising the quality of the textile substrate. Therefore, one of the solutions is to create flexible and stretchable conductive yarn that contains a small surface-mounted electronic component embedded in the fibers of the conductive yarn. The purpose of this research work is to manufacture and subsequently evaluate the physical and electromechanical properties of amber strand (Toyobo’s p-phenylene benzobisoxazole fiber zylon) yarns with embedded surface-mounted device components. Using a benchtop reflow-soldering machine, the surface-mounted device component was successfully inserted into the amber strand conductive yarn. Then the developed electronic yarn was coated using thermoplastic polyurethane for encapsulation purposes. Furthermore, reliability tests of the electrical and mechanical properties of the electronic yarn (tensile strain and washing) were carried out. From the results it can be seen that the developed thermoplastic polyurethane encapsulated electronic yarn had a tensile strength of 37.38 N with a 4.1 mm extension. Furthermore, the relationship between the strain and washing action on the electrical resistance of the developed electronic yarn was experimentally investigated. The analytical finding shows that mechanical stress and laundry washing had a significant influence on the electrical resistance of the electronic yarn.