A Novel Elastic Conductive Yarn for Smart Textile Applications

Abstract

Conductive yarns are crucial for electrical connections in electronic textiles and are used in fabricating sensors, electrodes, and wearable communication devices. Challenges in conductive and elastic properties of conductive yarns, their durability and compatibility with existing manufacturing processes limit mass production and affordability of conductive yarn. This work investigates elastic, shell‐conductive, and non‐corrosive electro‐conductive yarns (ECYs) for textile‐based wearable electronics. The existing textile manufacturing processes (plaiting, coiling, and twisting) were used to fabricate different blend ratios of stainless‐steel conductive yarn and elastomeric yarn. The ECY samples were inspected for structural uniformity, conductive coverage, ability to be woven, thickness, and extensibility. The most promising ECY exhibited a breaking force of 10.87 N, a tenacity of 2.04 cN/tex, and an elongation at break of 61.1%, suitable for integration into e‐textiles where elasticity is required. ECY with conductive coverage of 85.36% provides better electrical connection points, while a thickness of 0.69 mm and linear density of 534 tex make it compatible with traditional textile manufacturing equipment. Our findings demonstrate that the fabrication method and input parameters significantly impact the properties of ECY, including their elasticity and conductive coverage. Utilising ECYs in fabric circuit boards, can enable improved smart wearables for sustainable and modular integration of electronic components.This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

The Interconnecting Process and Sensing Performance of Stretchable Hybrid Electronic Yarn for Body Temperature Monitoring

“…Therefore, new interconnection structures and encapsulating methods need to be developed in order to improve the durability and maintain sensing accuracy for this kind of hybrid electronic yarn. Previous work has also shown that the helix structure is a common strategy for achieving the good stretchability of metal wire [ 13 , 14 , 15 ] while bonding technology with a conductive adhesive is a mature and applicable interconnection technology for producing printed flexible hybrid electronics [ 16 ]. In this way, the strategy combining the helix wire structure with bonding technology could potentially enable high mechanical durability and large-scale manufacturing for hybrid electronic yarn and then improve human motion flexibility, the working performance stability, and the service lifetime of smart garments or fabrics.…”