Actuator Materials: Review on Recent Advances and Future Outlook for Smart Textiles

Abstract

Smart textiles based on actuator materials are of practical interest, but few types have been commercially exploited. The challenge for researchers has been to bring the concept out of the laboratory by working out how to build these smart materials on an industrial scale and permanently incorporate them into textiles. Smart textiles are considered as the next frontline for electronics. Recent developments in advance technologies have led to the appearance of wearable electronics by fabricating, miniaturizing and embedding flexible conductive materials into textiles. The combination of textiles and smart materials have contributed to the development of new capabilities in fabrics with the potential to change how athletes, patients, soldiers, first responders, and everyday consumers interact with their clothes and other textile products. Actuating textiles in particular, have the potential to provide a breakthrough to the area of smart textiles in many ways. The incorporation of actuating materials in to textiles is a striking approach as a small change in material anisotropy properties can be converted into significant performance enhancements, due to the densely interconnected structures. Herein, the most recent advances in smart materials based on actuating textiles are reviewed. The use of novel emerging twisted synthetic yarns, conducting polymers, hybrid carbon nanotube and spandex yarn actuators, as well as most of the cutting–edge polymeric actuators which are deployed as smart textiles are discussed.

PEDOT-Based Conducting Polymer Actuators

“…EAPs are the current promising artificial biological muscles, owing to their high resilience and fracture toughness, ability to engender large actuation strains, and inherent vibration-damping properties, which are referred to as artificial muscles in many reports (Bar-Cohen, 2000 , 2002 ; Asplund et al, 2010 ). According to the deformation mechanism, EAPs can be divided into two categories (Smela, 2003 ; Romasanta et al, 2015 ; Kongahage and Foroughi, 2019 ; Melling et al, 2019 ). One is the electric field active material (also known as electronic EAPs), which is driven by electric fields or electrostatic action (Coulomb force) in dry environments.…”

Flexible Textile Strain Sensor Based on Copper-Coated Lyocell Type Cellulose Fabric

“…In the review of Kongahage and Foroughi, conjugated double bond conductive polymers (CP) were described as promising materials for actuators consisting of polypyrrole (PPy), polyaniline (PANI) and PEDOT:PSS substrates. Those CP actuators can be used to monitor bending and linear motion [33]. Atalay et al constructed a knitted textile strain sensor made of conductive yarns for human body motion detection [34].…”

Biomedical Application of Electroactive Polymers in Electrochemical Sensors: A Review

“…Along with changes in conductivity, a changing oxidation state also results in changes in other properties, including volume, permeability, reactivity, solubility, optical properties, and thermoelectric properties. There are many excellent reviews covering CP optical properties [15,16], and thermoelectric properties [17] as well as CP applications in energy storage [18,19], photovoltaics [20,21], light emitting devices [22,23], sensors [24,25], and actuators [26,27]. The focus of this review is the use of CPs in electrochemical biomedical sensors.…”