Smart textiles interaction

Consumer demands for functional, smart, intelligent, interactive, and eco-friendly textile products using new generation and innovative textile auxiliaries based on sustainable bionanopolymers and other nanomaterials are undoubtedly growing. 

Colour and pattern change are two predominant abilities of smart textiles. How can these two features be used to create an active interaction with human emotions in real life However, before we answer this question let us try to discuss our previous knowledge of colour and pattern. 

Baurley S. Interactive and experiential design in smart textile products and applications. Personal Ubiquitous Comput 2004 8(3—4) 274—81. 

The textile industry still constitutes one of Europe s most relevant industrial sectors for both the economy and society. The very latest trend in textile and linked industries is to create miscellaneous new products which possess the potential of interacting with the surrounding environment through active feedback. This class of new interactive material is termed intelligent textile structures or smart textiles. In order to make interactive fabrics available at the industrial level it is necessary to apply a multidisciplinary approach. The route to develop and optimise multifunctional material involves in the same way textile engineering and colloid chemistry. The complexity of the production process for modern composite materials is a real challenge to textile engineering but the fundamentals of interfacial and colloid science are indispensable to characterise and control the... 

Electrically conductive or electroactive fibers are commonly used in protective cloth, filters, and smart and interactive textiles, which could be used in electrical, medical, sports, energy, and military applications. Conductive fibers, especially for commonly used synthetic fiber, can be prepared in core—sheath bicomponent fiber, adding conductive additives in the core part. Functional additives include carbon black, multi-waUed carbon nanotubes, grapheme, ZnO, silver, and conductive polymers [52]. Properties of some conductive libers are listed in Table 2.38. 

However, smart textiles can be generally described as a complex system that consists of two basic components. These include textile structures that carry specific functions and their corresponding electronic parts. In this case, the stmcture, which has an additional function, can be a textile sensor or actuator that ensures interaction with the environment through a physical or chemical reaction. The data regarding this interaction is transferred and processed in order to bring the acquired information to an application. Therefore, electronics are often an inseparable part of such smart systems. Correspondingly, the morphology of a smart textile unit is crucial in the development of such systems. Usually a unit has a multi-layer structure, which incorporates sensors, circuits, the infrastructure career, the protective layer and other relevant compounds. 

In the technical report Textiles and textile products—smart textiles—definitions, categorisation, applications and standardization needs that has been drawn up by Technical Committee CEN/TC 248, smart textile materials are defined as fiuictional textile material, which interacts actively with its environment, i.e., it responds or adapts to changes in the environment. More specifically, a smart textile system is defined as a textile system which exhibits an intended and exploitable response as a reaction either to changes in its surroundings/environment or to an external signal/input. As can be seen from the definition, the sensing capability is one of the enabling features of smart textiles. 

During the last decade, textiles entered a new era of smart textiles. Mainly, smart textiles are defined as textiles that interact with their surroundings. They can be described as textile materials that think for themselves, for example through the incorporation of electronic devices or smart materials (Stoppa and Chiolerio, 2014). 

Due to electron-transport characteristics of Conjugated polymers or ICPs, they are regarded as semi eonductors or even sometimes eonduetors. Due to their high eonduetivity, lower weight, and environmental stability, they have a very important place in the field of smart and interactive textiles [76]. 

---