Technical Embroidery for Smart Textiles: Review

Abstract

-Traditionally embroidery is known as a conventional technique of textile decoration. Since the niche of technical textiles is rapidly expanding and is the main field of innovation and research in textile and apparel industry, embroidery is found in a variety of new functional applications due to the unique opportunity of creating three-dimensional light-weight structures and laying threads on the base material in all directions. As the field of smart textiles is vast per se and is associated with technical textiles and wearable technologies, the main applications of the embroidery may be described accordingly as ones for technical applications. In the sphere of medical textiles, embroidery is a relatively new technique, but is successfully used for wounddressing development and innovative solutions for tissue engineering due to the opportunity of creating three-dimensional structures from fine polymer materials. Another advantageous characteristic of goods developed by embroidery is dimensional stability of manufactured textile structures. Due to these particularities embroidery is used widely also for such technical applications as development of heating grids, shielding, conductive interconnections, intelligent textile sensors and interfaces etc. Moreover, a large variety of materials and threads can be used in prototyping by the technique, e.g., conductive threads, metal wires, laminated polymer and carbon fibers.One of the challenging sub-sectors of intelligent textiles and smart textiles for healthcare applications is the research and development of textile sensors for biometrics and measurement of physical parameters. Most of the mentioned biosensors are implemented by transferring the principles of conventional actuators to the textile structures.

Textile yarn thermocouples for use in fabrics

“…The results of these experiments confirm that making a thermopile from pure conductive textile yarns is possible, particularly from a single woven, braided, or knitted NiCF yarn. Unlike the thermocouple mentioned by Mecnika et al, 11 our thermocouple was made from a single conductive yarn etched at specific spots. This allows us to create multiple thermocouples formed in series (thermopile) on a single conductive yarn in order to get a higher voltage.…”

“…Ziegler and Frydrysiak 10 published their research on using several conductive threads such as polyacrylonitrile (Nitril), steel staple fibers, silver-coated polyamide, and graphite, but they found that the thermocouples possessed low accuracy and sensitivity. Another approach has been explained in a review paper by Mecnika et al 11 According to them, a thermocouple can be created from two different conductive metal yarns by embroidery technique.…”

Smart Textiles and Sensorized Garments for Physiological Monitoring: A Review of Available Solutions and Techniques

“…Another typology of fabric is the embroidery, a decoration of conductive patterns on finished textile surface. This technology is of interest in the field of smart textiles because of the possibility to lay the base material in all directions rather than in pre-defined ones [ 29 ]; because of this, an enhanced skin-electrode contact can be obtained [ 27 ].…”

Performance Evaluation of Knitted and Stitched Textile Strain Sensors

“… ( a ) Double lockstitch embroidery. The upper thread can be conductive; ( b ) Tailored fiber placement (TFP) embroidery; useful for fixating of functional fibers [ 34 ]. …”