Electrical engineering

Archaeology

Nanotechnology

Process engineering

Yarn

Mathematics

History

Operating system

Statistics

Wearable computer

Engineering

Textile

Electronics

Embedded system

Composite material

Materials science

Woven fabric

Graphene

Computer science

Flexibility (engineering)

Textile industry

Wearable technology

Weaving

Process (computing)

Scalability

Database

ACS Nano

Multifunctional wearable e-textiles have been a focus of much attention due to their great potential for healthcare, sportswear, fitness, space, and military applications. Among them, electroconductive textile yarn shows great promise for use as next-generation flexible sensors without compromising the properties and comfort of usual textiles. However, the current manufacturing process of metal-based electroconductive textile yarn is expensive, unscalable, and environmentally unfriendly. Here we report a highly scalable and ultrafast production of graphene-based flexible, washable, and bendable wearable textile sensors. We engineer graphene flakes and their dispersions in order to select the best formulation for wearable textile application. We then use a high-speed yarn dyeing technique to dye (coat) textile yarn with graphene-based inks. Such graphene-based yarns are then integrated into a knitted structure as a flexible sensor and could send data wirelessly to a device via a self-powered RFID or a low-powered Bluetooth. The graphene textile sensor thus produced shows excellent temperature sensitivity, very good washability, and extremely high flexibility. Such a process could potentially be scaled up in a high-speed industrial setup to produce tonnes (∼1000 kg/h) of electroconductive textile yarns for next-generation wearable electronics applications.

Engineering Graphene Flakes for Wearable Textile Sensors <i>via</i> Highly Scalable and Ultrafast Yarn Dyeing Technique

Engineering Graphene Flakes for Wearable Textile Sensors via Highly Scalable and Ultrafast Yarn Dyeing Technique