Development of a Screen-Printable Carbon Paste to Achieve Washable Conductive Textiles

Abstract

Conductive tracks are key constituents of wearable electronics and e-textiles, as they form the interconnective links between wearable electrical devices/systems. They are made by coating or printing conductive patterns or tracks on textiles or by weaving, knitting, or embroidering conductive yarns into textiles. Screen printing is a mature and cost-effective fabrication method that is used in the textile industry. It allows a high degree of geometric freedom for the design of conductive patterns or tracks. Current screen-printed conductive textiles have the limitations of low durability when washed or when placed under bending, and they typically require encapsulation layers to protect the printed conductor. This paper presents a printable paste formulation and fabrication process based on screen printing for achieving a flexible and durable conductive polyester–cotton textile using an inexpensive carbon as the conductor. The process does not require an interface, the smoothing of the textile, or an encapsulation layer to protect the conductor on the textile. A resistivity of 4 × 10−2 Ω·m was achieved. The textile remains conductive after 20 standard washes, resulting in the conductor’s resistance increasing by 140%. The conductive textile demonstrated less than ±10% resistance variation after bending for 2000 cycles.

Design and Development of a Stretchable Electronic Textile and its Application in a Knee Sleeve Targeting Wearable Pain Management

“…Electronic textiles (e-textiles) are advanced textiles with integrated electronic functionality [1] ranging from conductive interconnection [2], sensing/actuating [3], signal processing [4,5] and wireless communication [6,7]. Advanced e-textile technologies offer a platform to realise wearable healthcare devices of which the market is projected to reach $168.2 billion by 2030 from $26.8 billion in 2022 [8].…”