Fabrication And Investigation Of Electrically Conducting Fabrics

With the development of advanced technology, smart textiles have been widely recognized as a new textile material with special functions. Within the field the fabrication and investigation of electrically conducting textiles used for flexible sensors have been key issues. In recent years there have been quite a lot research regarding the research of approaches to produce the electrical conducting textiles. However there are few reports about the fabrication of flexible sensing materials with response to the external mechanical stimuli. Polypyrrole and Polyaniline are quite popular for producing electrical conducting textiles due to their excellent electrical conductivity. The process of fabricating the electrically conducting textiles used for flexible sensors is still under exploring.In this project pyrrole and Polyester/Spandex fabrics were used to polymerize electrical conductive textiles. The polypyrrole-conducting textiles have good electroconductibility (ρ_s=350—1200Ω). The principle of polypyrrole electrical conductivity and doping theory were discussed. The effects of fabrication methods and processing conditions were investigated in details. The relationship between elongation of fabrics and electrical conductivity was explored. A self-constructed system for sensing the change of electrical conductivity of the fabrics with the external forces was made.Through experimental analysis, the conclusions are as follows:1. Using elastic Polyester/Spandex textiles as the substrates, polypyrrole-conductive textiles can be successfully fabricated;2. From the preliminary experiments, ferric trichloride was chosen as oxidant and sodium dodecyl benzene sulfonate was selected as doping agent to polymerize the electrical conducting fabrics. The experiments showed that the effects of amount of oxidant as well as doping agent on the electrical conductivity of fabrics were significant. Meanwhile the finish treatment affected the electrical stability of the fabrics.3. The study showed that the surface resistance may reach about 300 ohm soon after the fabric was polymerized. After a period of time the surface resistance of conducting textiles increased gradually at ambient condition.4. A self-constructed system for sensing the change of electrical conductivity of the fabrics with the external forces was used to study the relationship between the change of conductivity of the fabrics and the external forces. The surface resistance of the fabrics decreased with an increase of elongation of the fabrics.