Theme: digital textile

Abstract.Smart textiles are fabrics that have been designed and manufactured to include technologies that provide the wearer with increased functionality. These textiles have numerous potential applications, such as the ability to communicate with other devices, conduct energy, transform into other materials and protect the wearer from environmental hazards. Research and development towards wearable textile-based personal systems allowing e.g. health monitoring, protection and safety, and healthy lifestyle gained strong interest during the last few years. Smart fabrics and interactive textiles’ activities include personal health management through integration, validation, and use of smart clothing and other networked mobile devices as well as projects targeting the full integration of sensors/actuators, energy sources, processing and communication within the clothes to enable personal applications such as protection/safety, emergency and healthcare. This writing includes the origin and introduction of smart textile and integrated wearable electronics for sport wear, industrial purpose, automotive Volume 5 • Issue 1 • 1000181J Textile Sci EngISSN: 2165-8064 JTESE, an open access journal Research Article Open AccessSyduzzaman et al., J Textile Sci Eng 2015, 5:1http://dx.doi.org/10.4172/2165-8064.1000181Review Article Open AccessTextile Science & EngineeringKeywords: Health care and safety; Interactive textiles; Nanotechnology; Sportswear; Smart textilesIntroductionSMART TEXTILES are dened as textiles that can sense and react to environmental conditions or stimuli, from mechanical, thermal, magnetic, chemical, electrical, or other sources. ey are able to sense and respond to external conditions (stimuli) in a predetermined way. Textile products which can act in a dierent manner than an average fabric and are mostly able to perform a special function certainly count as smart textiles [1]. Other examples of smart textiles include fabrics capable of releasing medication or moisturizer in to the skin, fabrics that help control the vibration of muscles during athletic activities and materials that regulate body temperature. ere are also simpler, aesthetic applications for smart textiles, including those that can change color, light up in patterns or potentially display pictures and video [2].e original function of textiles was to shield man from cold and rain. Later on in history aesthetic aspects also came to play a role in clothing. Much more recently a new generation of textiles has arisen; smart and interactive textiles. Interactive textiles are a relatively new discipline in the textile sector. ey are active materials that have sensing and actuation properties. eir potential is enormous. one could think of smart clothing that makes us feel comfortable at all times, during any activity and in any environmental conditions, a suit that protects and monitors, that warns in case of danger and even helps to treat diseases and injuries. Such clothing could be used from the moment we are born till the end of our life. Some of the more important eorts include applications that Aid in patient health monitoring through sensor embedded garments that track and record biometric data, helps to improve athletic performance both by analyzing sensor data and adapting to changing conditions [3]. So as to improve performance over the time. Provides environmental sensing and communication technologies for military defense and other security personals. Present new structural and decorative solutions for fashion design. e smart textile can sense and react to environmental conditions or stimuli from mechanical, thermal, chemical, electrical, magnetic or other sources. ree components must be present in smart textiles. i.e. sensors, actuators and controlling units [4]. Modied textile material and miniaturized electronic devices create smart cloths. ese cloths are like ordinary cloth providing special function in various situations according to the design and application.History of Smart Textiles Developmente basic materials needed to construct e-textiles, conductive threads and fabrics have been around for over 1000 years. In particular, artisans have been wrapping ne metal foils, most oen gold and silver, around fabric threads for centuries [5]. Many of Queen Elizabeth I’s gowns, for example, are embroidered with gold-wrapped threads. (See the entry on Goldwork for more information)At the end of the 19th century, as people developed and grew accustomed to electric appliances, designers and engineers began to combine electricity with clothing and jewelry—developing a series of illuminated and motorized necklaces, hats, broaches and costumes [6,7]. For example, in the late 1800s, a person could hire young women adorned in light-studded evening gowns from the Electric Girl Lighting Company to provide cocktail party entertainment [8]. In 1968, the Museum of Contemporary Cra in New York City held a groundbreaking exhibition called Body Covering that focused on the relationship between technology and apparel. e show featured astronauts’ space suits along with clothing that could inate and deate light up, and heat and cool itself [9]. Particularly noteworthy in this collection was the work of Diana Dew, a designer who created a line of electronic fashion, including electroluminescent party dresses and belts that could sound alarm sirens.

Ultra smart textilesVery smart textiles are the third generation of smart textiles, which can sense, react and adopt themselves to environmental conditions or stimuli. A very smart or intelligent textile essentially consists of a unit, which works like the brain, with cognition, reasoning and activating capacities. e production of very smart textiles is now a reality aer a successful marriage of traditional textiles and clothing technology with other branches of science like material science, structural mechanics, sensor and actuator technology, advance processing technology, communication, articial intelligence, biology etc.New bre and textile materials, and miniaturized electronic components make the preparation of smart textiles possible, in order to create truly usable smart clothes. ese intelligent clothes are worn like ordinary clothing, providing help in various situations according to the designed applications. Smart Materials and Fibers in Smart Textiles‘Smart’ or ‘Functional’ materials usually form part of a ‘Smart System’ that has the capability to sense its environment and the eects thereof and, if truly smart, to respond to that external stimulus via an active control mechanism. Smart materials and systems occupy a ‘Technology space’, which also includes the areas of sensors and actuators [14].Materialse materials of our surroundings are being “intellectualized”. ese materials can interact, communicate and sense. Polymeric or carbon coated threads Conductive yarn, conductive rubber, and conductive ink have been developed into sensors or used as an interconnection substrate. Conductive yarns and bers are made by mixing pure metallic or natural bers with conductive materials. Pure metallic yarns can be made of composite stainless steel or ne continuous conductive metal-alloy combination of bers with conductive materials can be completed by the methods namely: Fibers lled with conductive material (e.g., carbon -or metallic particles); Fibers coated with conductive polymers or metal and Fibers spun with thin metallic or plastic conductive threads. Metallic silk, organza, stainless steel lament, metal clad aramid ber, conductive polymer ber, conductive polymer coating and special carbon ber have been applied to the manufacture of fabric sensors. Materials such as metallic, optical bers and conductive polymers may be integrated into the textile structure, thus supplying electrical conductivity, sensing capabilities and data transmission. Organic polymers may provide a solution to overcome the stiness of inorganic crystals such as silicon. ese materials are light, elastic, resilient, mechanically exible, inexpensive and easy to process.Metal bersMetal threads are made up of metal bers which are very thin metal. e bers are produced either through a bundle-drawing process or else shaved o the edge of thin metal sheeting. Metallic threads and yarns may be knitted or woven into a textile and used to form interconnects between components (Figure 1). ey may also be used as electrodes for monitoring electrical physiological activity such as electrocardiogram (ECG) signals.