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Rugged Textile Electrodes for Wearable Devices Obtained by Vapor Coating Off‐the‐Shelf, Plain‐Woven Fabrics
Author(s) -
Zhang Lushuai,
Fairbanks Marianne,
Andrew Trisha L.
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
advanced functional materials
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 6.069
H-Index - 322
eISSN - 1616-3028
pISSN - 1616-301X
DOI - 10.1002/adfm.201700415
Subject(s) - materials science , electrode , composite material , woven fabric , coating , textile , plain weave , thread (computing) , porosity , yarn , nanotechnology , mechanical engineering , chemistry , engineering
Fabrics are pliable, breathable, lightweight, ambient stable, and have unmatched haptic perception. Here, a vapor deposition method is used to transform off‐the‐shelf plain‐woven fabrics, such as linen, silk, and bast fiber fabrics, into metal‐free conducting electrodes. These fabric electrodes are resistant to wear, stable after laundering and ironing, and can be body‐mounted with little detriment to their performance. A unique by‐product of conformally vapor coating plain‐woven fabrics is that textile parameters, such as thread material and fabric porosity, significantly affect the conductivity of the resulting fabric electrodes. The resistivities of the electrodes reported herein are linearly, not exponentially, dependent on length, meaning that they can be feasibly incorporated into garments and other large‐area body‐mounted devices. Further, these fabric electrodes possess the feel, weight, breathability, and pliability of standard fabrics, which are important to enable adoption of wearable devices.