Wearable Electronics and Smart Textiles: A Critical Review

Abstract

Electronic Textiles (e-textiles) are fabrics that feature electronics and interconnections woven into them, presenting physical flexibility and typical size that cannot be achieved with other existing electronic manufacturing techniques. Components and interconnections are intrinsic to the fabric and thus are less visible and not susceptible of becoming tangled or snagged by surrounding objects. E-textiles can also more easily adapt to fast changes in the computational and sensing requirements of any specific application, this one representing a useful feature for power management and context awareness. The vision behind wearable computing foresees future electronic systems to be an integral part of our everyday outfits. Such electronic devices have to meet special requirements concerning wearability. Wearable systems will be characterized by their ability to automatically recognize the activity and the behavioral status of their own user as well as of the situation around her/him, and to use this information to adjust the systems' configuration and functionality. This review focuses on recent advances in the field of Smart Textiles and pays particular attention to the materials and their manufacturing process. Each technique shows advantages and disadvantages and our aim is to highlight a possible trade-off between flexibility, ergonomics, low power consumption, integration and eventually autonomy.

Fabrication of Photovoltaic Textiles

“…Metal wires have been classified as possessing diameters of 30-1400 µm, and metal fibres as possessing diameters of 2-40 µm [19]. Whether the fabric produced can be considered a textile or not is a matter of opinion!…”

“…These particles may then have to be sintered on the fabric to provide continuous connectivity between them, but the elevated temperatures usually required for sintering may degrade the underlying fabric. Silver nanoparticles can be sintered at 180 • C [19], so commodity fabrics made from polyester or nylon, for example, whose melt temperatures are well above 180 • C, are likely to be suitable. It is also important that the metal adheres well to the fabric, as, for bending and folding, the fabric can induce cracking in the metal layer, with consequent loss of conductivity.…”

Impact and Scope of Intelligent Textiles in Health Care

“…They defined as textile products such as filaments and fibers, yarns along with knitted, woven or non-woven structures that connect with the environment or users [10]. These structures are able to sense the environmental conditions and stimuli [11,12].…”

“…This stimuli or response could be mechanical, chemical, thermal, magnetic, electric or other sources [13]. According to their type of reaction, smart textiles can be categorized as passive smart materials, active smart materials and very smart materials [10][11][12][13].…”

A Wearable System for the Evaluation of the Human-Horse Interaction: A Preliminary Study

“…In this work, we present a textile-based system for the ECG monitoring in horses, where the electrodes are completely made of fabric (electro-textile or e-textile). Normally, textile materials are insulators, but for this application, conductive yarns are integrated into the fabric during the manufacturing process [62]. In the human biomedical field, e-textiles are considered as higher value-added textiles and are prominently developed for being used in smart clothing.…”