Futuristic Clothes: Electronic Textiles and Wearable Technologies

Abstract

This review summarizes the recent developments and importance of wearable electronic textiles in the past decade. Wearable electronic textiles are an emerging interdisciplinary research area that requires new design approaches. This challenging interdisciplinary research field brings together specialists in electronics, information technology, microsystems, and textiles to make an innovation in the development of wearable electronic products. Wearable electronic textiles play a key role among various technologies (clothing, communication, information, healthcare monitoring, military, sensors, magnetic shielding, etc.). In this review, applications of wearable electronic textiles are described, including an investigation of their fabrication techniques. This review highlights the basic processes, possible applications, and main materials to build wearable E-textiles and combines the fundamentals of E-textiles for the readers who have different backgrounds. Moreover, reliability, reusability, and efficiency of wearable electronic textiles are discussed together with the opportunities and drawbacks of the wearable E-textiles that are addressed in this review article.

Keywords: conductive textiles; e‐textiles; flexible electronics; smart textiles; wearable electronics.

Figure 1

SEM image of cotton fibers with PEDOT:PSS coating. Reproduced with permission.^{[ 28 ]} Copyright 2018, MDPI. b) SEM image of PANI and carbon‐coated yarns. Reproduced with permission.^{[ 29 ]} Copyright 2016, Springer Nature. Chemical structure of c) PEDOT and d) polyacetylene.

Figure 2

Conductive yarns: a) Carbon fiber, b) carbon‐nanotube‐containing yarn. Reproduced with permission.^{[ 51 ]} Copyright 2014, Elsevier. c) Stainless steel yarn, d) silver‐coated polyamide yarn.

Figure 3

Schematic representations of a) woven and b) knitted fabric constructions. Reproduced with permission.^{[ 83 ]} Copyright 2017, Elsevier. c) The morphology of the nickel‐coated woven fabric. Reproduced with permission.^{[ 84 ]} Copyright 2013, American Chemical Society. d) Knitted fabric containing silver‐coated polyamide yarns. Reproduced with permission.^{[ 85 ]} Copyright 2012, John Wiley and Sons.

Figure 4

a) Photograph of Ni/Cu coated woven fabric. b) Photograph of PEDOT:PSS dip‐coated knitted cotton fabric. c) Basic weaving structure. d) Representation of knitted elastomeric and conductive yarn. Reproduced with permission.^{[ 110 ]} Copyright 2013, MDPI.

Figure 5

a) Embroidered silver yarn on the fabric. b) Embroidered stainless steel yarn as an antenna. Reproduced with permission.^{[ 124 ]} Copyright 2004, Elsevier. c) Embroidered textile electrode for ECG measurements. d) Embroidered copper yarns.

Figure 6

Schematic diagram of resistance measurement: a) cylindrical weight, b) parallel bars methods.

Figure 7

a) Cross‐section of woven fabric. Reproduced with permission.^{[ 28 ]} Copyright 2018, MDPI. b) Photograph of the woven optoelectronic fabric. Reproduced with permission.^{[ 153 ]} Copyright 2013, Elsevier.

Figure 8

a) Main application areas of wearable electronic textiles. b) Firefighter suit equipped with emergency response sensors. c) Wearable piezoresistive sensors and fabric electrodes. Reproduced with permission.^{[ 193 ]} Copyright 2016, MDPI. d) Image of the wearable knitted electrodes for the measurement of ECG signal. Reproduced with permission.^{[ 167 ]} Copyright 2018, MDPI.