Smart Nanotextiles: Materials and Their Application

Abstract

Textiles are ubiquitous to us, enveloping our skin and surroundings. Not only do they provide a protective shield or act as a comforting cocoon but they also serve aesthetic appeal and cultural importance. Recent technologies have allowed the traditional functionality of textiles to be extended. Advances in material science have added intelligence to textiles and created "smart" clothes. Smart textiles can sense and react to environmental conditions or stimuli, e.g. from mechanical, thermal, chemical, electrical or magnetic sources. Such textiles find uses in many applications ranging from military and security to personalised healthcare, hygiene and entertainment. Smart textiles may be termed "passive" or "active". A passive smart textile monitors the wearer's physiology or the environment e.g. a shirt with in-built thermistors to log body temperature over time. If actuators are integrated the textile becomes an active smart textile as it may respond to a particular stimulus, e.g. the temperature aware shirt may automatically rolls up the sleeves when body temperature becomes elevated. The fundamental components in any smart textile are sensors and actuators. Interconnections, power supply and a control unit are also needed to complete the system. These components must all be integrated into textiles while still retaining the usual tactile, flexible and comfortable properties that we expect from a textile. Adding new functionalities to textiles while maintaining the look and feel of the fabric is where nanotechnology is having a huge impact on the textile industry. This article describes current developments in materials for smart nanotextiles and some of the many applications where these innovative textiles are of great benefit.

Novel shape-memory polyurethane fibers for textile applications

“…Shape-memory fabrics are materials that are able to return to a preprogrammed shape because of an external stimulus, generally temperature. 53 The glass transition temperature was assumed to serve as the T trans for the shape-memory behavior. Therefore, in this study fabrics were produced by a knitting machine, to test the shape-memory behavior of fabrics from synthesized pellets.…”

Nanofabrics—The Smart Textile

“…Fortified fabrics with advanced powered fibres have been used to shield the user carrying the fabric from impact, lethal touch [55]. Many innovative combinations of materials may be included into the fabrics to create unique electricity-interactive material structures [56].…”

“…Nanotechnology vanquishes the limitation of the use of ordinary strategies to add exceptional highlights to textiles [4]. As a matter of fact, garments are required to be waterproof, self-cleaning, combustible, antimicrobial and creepy crawly repellent for illness counteraction, safe from Ultraviolet radiation, and temperature-controlled dress for comfort [4,5,6]. Nanofabrics are unforgiving mixes at the nano-level that can be treated over a few scopes of new properties.…”

Copper deposition on textiles via an automated dispensing process for flexible microstrip antennas

“…E-textiles), also referred to as smart textiles, allow electronic elements such as conductors, microcontrollers, solar cells, batteries, and sensors and actuators to be integrated in fabrics, enabling many wearable technologies, such as computing, power transmission, sensing, wireless communication, etc. [1][2][3] Wearable, flexible antennas are one important component in wireless communication in E-textiles and have attracted a great deal of attention for military, space and healthcare applications. [4][5][6] A bodyworn, flexible antenna needs to be low profile.…”