Researchers to manufacture graphene-based wearable e-textiles commercially

It will become possible to pull on a shirt and have that shirt monitor your skin directly and track underlying electrical signaling.  This may be useful.  Until now we could only imagine it, useful or not.

Better our clothing can be fitted easily enough with a range of potential sensing tools.

Right now we do not know were this ends, but know we will know in a decade or so..   .

Researchers to manufacture graphene-based wearable e-textiles commercially

Mir Abdullah Al Mahfuz

February 4, 2019

https://www.textiletoday.com.bd/researchers-manufacture-graphene-based-wearable-e-textiles-commercially/

The market for e-textile clothing is forecasted to reach $5 billion by 2027, according to the market research firm IDTechEX.

Scientists have developed a simple and cost-effective method to manufacture graphene-based wearable electronic-textiles on an industrial scale. Graphene is predicted to be one of the most prominent materials in wearable e-textiles, nonetheless, there is no good way to manufacture them on an industrial scale.

Figure: Graphene-based wearable e-textiles move closer to commercial production. The new technique could allow graphene e-textiles to be manufactured at commercial production rates of 150 meters per minute, researchers said. “To be able to produce graphene-based wearable e-textiles in scalable quantity at very high speed is a significant breakthrough for the rapidly growing wearable market,” said Nazmul Karim from The University of Manchester in the UK.

Nazmul Karim further added, “Our simple and cost-effective way of producing multi-functional graphene textiles could easily be scaled up for many real-life applications, such as sportswear, military gear, and medical clothing.”

In the new method, the researchers have reversed the previous process of coating textiles with graphene-based materials. Conventionally, the textiles are first treated with graphene oxide, and then the graphene oxide is reduced to its functional form of reduced graphene oxide. Instead, the researchers first reduced the graphene oxide in solution and then coated the textiles with the reduced form.

By making coating the ultimate step, it becomes possible to use a coating technique termed padding, which is currently the most commonly used method of applying functional finishes to textiles in the textile industry. For instance, water-repellent and wrinkle-free clothing are often made by padding.

A commercial pad-dry unit can process approximately 150 meters of fabric in just one minute—a colossal leap from laboratory methods for coating textiles with graphene that frequently involves multiple time-consuming steps. As the researchers write in their paper, they believe that using padding to manufacture graphene-based e-textiles will be an imperative step in moving from R&D-based e-textiles to real-world applications.

In their study, the researchers demonstrated that e-textiles made by a laboratory-scale pad-dry unit exhibited excellent electrical and mechanical characteristics. Tests exhibited that the reduced graphene oxide forms a uniform coating around the individual cotton fibers, which results in good electric conductivity, tensile strength, breathability, flexibility, and overall comfort of the fabric. The coated fabric also appears to remain electrically conductive after repeated washing cycles.

Graphene-based wearable e-textiles have a diversity of potential applications. One possibility, which the researchers demonstrated, is that sensors can be incorporated into the fabric for monitoring physical activity. A sensor mounted on the wrist, for example, can capture mechanical movements such as bending/unbending, stretching/relaxation, and twisting/untwisting. Another possibility is to incorporate flexible heating elements throughout an item of clothing, along with flexible super capacitors to power them.

“Our future research plan is to look into other 2D materials and utilize their benefits for wearable e-textiles applications and we are also looking to commercialize these technologies in collaboration with industrial partners,” Nazmul Karim concluded.