Design of Electro-Thermal Glove with Sensor Function for Raynaud’s Phenomenon Patients

Abstract

Raynaud’s phenomenon (RP) is a disease that mainly affects human fingertips during cold weather. It is difficult to treat this disease using medicine, apart from keeping the body in a warm environment. In this research, conductive knitted fabrics were fabricated to help relax the vessels of the patient’s fingertips by providing proper heat, and also serving as a sensor to detect finger motion after relaxation of the blood vessels of patients. Four different structures, termed plain, purl, interlock, and rib were produced using conductive silver/PE (polyethylene) yarn and wool yarn, with a computerized flat knitting machine. The effect of knitted structure on the electro-thermal behavior, sensitivity, and stability of resistance change (∆R/R) under different tensile forces was investigated. By comprehensive comparison, the purl structure was identified as the preferred structure for the heating glove for RP patients, owing to superior electro-thermal behavior. Additionally, the purl structure had a greater capacity to detect different motions with stable resistance change. This potential electro-thermal glove could be used for functional, as well as aesthetic (fashion) purposes, and could be worn at any time and occasion with complete comfort.

Size Prediction and Electrical Performance of Knitted Strain Sensors

“…So far, plenty of knitted strain sensors are coated with conductive materials, such as graphene [14][15][16], polypyrrole [17,18], PEDOT: PSS [19], and nano-silver [20,21], showcasing the advantages of good stability, high sensitivity, and fast response. Various novel fabrication methods [22][23][24] have been proposed to knit the conductive yarn into the conductive fabric directly, forming an intelligent wearable device with sensing performance. However, these types of sensors are structurally unstable and have a small strain range, which definitely impedes their practical application [25,26].…”

Electrically heated wearable textiles produced by conventional pigmented inks containing carbon black

“…Heating elements in textile fabrics can be constructed by incorporating conductive yarns or filaments during the fabric manufacturing stage (Dawit et al , 2021). Conductive fabric for heating application can either be fabricated by coating single-wall carbon nanotubes or graphene/waterborne polyurethane or polypyrrole on textile materials (Yang et al , 2018; Hao et al , 2018; Kim et al , 2019).…”

“…Several textile-based products including heated gloves, ceramic textiles and wearable electric heaters have been developed to maintain human skin at the desired temperature, which may alleviate the pain, numbness in the patients’ fingers and toes. It would also help avoid further associated health complications of Raynaud’s disease (Nottingham Trent University, 2015; Ko and Berbrayer, 2002; Gonos, 2016; Dawit et al , 2021; Kim et al , 2019).…”