E-textile technology review – From materials to application

Abiodun Komolafe (1) , Bahareh Zaghari (2) , Russel Torah (1) , Alex Weddell (1) , Hamideh Khanbareh (3) , Zois Michail Tsikriteas (3) , Mark Vousden (1) , Mahmoud Wagih (1) , Ulises Tronco Jurado (1) , Junjie Shi (1) , Sheng Yong (1) , Sasikumar Arumugam (1) , Yi Li (1) , Kai Yang (1) , Guillaume Savelli (4) , Neil M. White (1) , Steve Beeby (1)

1 ECS - School of Electronics and Computer Science
2 SATM - School of Aerospace, Transport and Manufacturing
3 University of Bath [Bath]
4 DTNM - Département des Technologies des Nouveaux Matériaux (Ex Département des Technologies des NanoMatériaux)

Wearable devices are ideal for personalized electronic applications in several domains such as healthcare, entertainment, sports and military. Although wearable technology is a growing market, current wearable devices are predominantly battery powered accessory devices, whose form factors also preclude them from utilizing the large area of the human body for spatiotemporal sensing or energy harvesting from body movements. E-textiles provide an opportunity to expand on current wearables to enable such applications via the larger surface area offered by garments, but consumer devices have been few and far between because of the inherent challenges in replicating traditional manufacturing technologies (that have enabled these wearable accessories) on textiles. Also, the powering of e-textile devices with battery energy like in wearable accessories, has proven incompatible with textile requirements for flexibility and washing. Although current e-textile research has shown advances in materials, new processing techniques, and one-off e-textile prototype devices, the pathway to industry scale commercialization is still uncertain. This paper reports the progress on the current technologies enabling the fabrication of e-textile devices and their power supplies including textile-based energy harvesters, energy storage mechanisms, and wireless power transfer solutions. It identifies factors that limit the adoption of current reported fabrication processes and devices in the industry for mass-market commercialization.

Mots clés: Wearables; e-textile devices; e-textile power sources; e-textile manufacturing and scalability

Domaines: Physique des Hautes Energies - Expérience [hep-ex]

Abiodun Komolafe, Bahareh Zaghari, Russel Torah, Alex Weddell, Hamideh Khanbareh, et al.. E-textile technology review – From materials to application. IEEE Access, 2021, 9, pp.97152-97179. ⟨10.1109/ACCESS.2021.3094303⟩. ⟨cea-03317237⟩