Transforming Commercial Textiles and Threads into Sewable and Weavable Electric Heaters

We describe a process to transform commercial textiles and threads into electric heaters that can be cut/sewn or woven to fashion lightweight fabric heaters for local climate control and personal thermal management. Off-the-shelf fabrics are coated with a 1.5 μm thick film of a conducting polymer, p...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:ACS applied materials & interfaces 2017-09, Vol.9 (37), p.32299-32307
Main Authors: Zhang, Lushuai, Baima, Morgan, Andrew, Trisha L
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Electrodes
Polymers
Textiles
Wearable Electronic Devices
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Summary:We describe a process to transform commercial textiles and threads into electric heaters that can be cut/sewn or woven to fashion lightweight fabric heaters for local climate control and personal thermal management. Off-the-shelf fabrics are coated with a 1.5 μm thick film of a conducting polymer, poly­(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene), using an improved reactive vapor deposition method. Changes in the hand feel, weight, and breathability of the textiles after the coating process are imperceptible. The resulting fabric electrodes possess competitively low sheet resistances44 Ω/□ measured for coated bast fiber textiles and 61 Ω/□ measured for coated cotton textilesand act as low-power-consuming Joule heating elements. The electrothermal response of the textile electrodes remain unaffected after cutting and sewing due to the robustness of the conductive coating. Coated, conductive cotton yarns can also be plain-woven into a monolithic fabric heater. A demonstrative circuit design for a soft, lightweight, and breathable thermal glove is provided.
ISSN:1944-8244
1944-8252
DOI:10.1021/acsami.7b10514