Tag Archives: Homayoun Najjaran

Wearable electronic textiles from the UK, India, and Canada: two different carbon materials

It seems wearable electronic textiles may be getting nearer to the marketplace. I have three research items (two teams working with graphene and one working with carbon nanotubes) that appeared on my various feeds within two days of each other.

UK/China

This research study is the result of a collaboration between UK and Chinese scientists. From a May 15, 2019 news item on phys.org (Note: Links have been removed),


Wearable electronic components incorporated directly into fabrics have been developed by researchers at the University of Cambridge. The devices could be used for flexible circuits, healthcare monitoring, energy conversion, and other applications.

The Cambridge researchers, working in collaboration with colleagues at Jiangnan University in China, have shown how graphene – a two-dimensional form of carbon – and other related materials can be directly incorporated into fabrics to produce charge storage elements such as capacitors, paving the way to textile-based power supplies which are washable, flexible and comfortable to wear.

The research, published in the journal Nanoscale, demonstrates that graphene inks can be used in textiles able to store electrical charge and release it when required. The new textile electronic devices are based on low-cost, sustainable and scalable dyeing of polyester fabric. The inks are produced by standard solution processing techniques.

Building on previous work by the same team, the researchers designed inks which can be directly coated onto a polyester fabric in a simple dyeing process. The versatility of the process allows various types of electronic components to be incorporated into the fabric.

Schematic of the textile-based capacitor integrating GNP/polyesters as electrodes and h-BN/polyesters as dielectrics. Credit: Felice Torrisi

A May 16, 2019 University of Cambridge press release, which originated the news item, probes further,

Most other wearable electronics rely on rigid electronic components mounted on plastic or textiles. These offer limited compatibility with the skin in many circumstances, are damaged when washed and are uncomfortable to wear because they are not breathable.

“Other techniques to incorporate electronic components directly into textiles are expensive to produce and usually require toxic solvents, which makes them unsuitable to be worn,” said Dr Felice Torrisi from the Cambridge Graphene Centre, and the paper’s corresponding author. “Our inks are cheap, safe and environmentally-friendly, and can be combined to create electronic circuits by simply overlaying different fabrics made of two-dimensional materials on the fabric.”

The researchers suspended individual graphene sheets in a low boiling point solvent, which is easily removed after deposition on the fabric, resulting in a thin and uniform conducting network made up of multiple graphene sheets. The subsequent overlay of several graphene and hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) fabrics creates an active region, which enables charge storage. This sort of ‘battery’ on fabric is bendable and can withstand washing cycles in a normal washing machine.

“Textile dyeing has been around for centuries using simple pigments, but our result demonstrates for the first time that inks based on graphene and related materials can be used to produce textiles that could store and release energy,” said co-author Professor Chaoxia Wang from Jiangnan University in China. “Our process is scalable and there are no fundamental obstacles to the technological development of wearable electronic devices both in terms of their complexity and performance.”

The work done by the Cambridge researchers opens a number of commercial opportunities for ink based on two-dimensional materials, ranging from personal health and well-being technology, to wearable energy and data storage, military garments, wearable computing and fashion.

“Turning textiles into functional energy storage elements can open up an entirely new set of applications, from body-energy harvesting and storage to the Internet of Things,” said Torrisi “In the future our clothes could incorporate these textile-based charge storage elements and power wearable textile devices.”

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Wearable solid-state capacitors based on two-dimensional material all-textile heterostructures by Siyu Qiang, Tian Carey, Adrees Arbab, Weihua Song, Chaoxia Wang and Felice Torris. Nanoscale, 2019, Advance Article DOI: 10.1039/C9NR00463G First published on 18 Apr 2019

This paper is behind a paywall.

India

Prior to graphene’s reign as the ‘it’ carbon material, carbon nanotubes (CNTs) ruled. It’s been quieter on the CNT front since graphene took over but a May 15, 2019 Nanowerk Spotlight article by Michael Berger highlights some of the latest CNT research coming out of India,


The most important technical challenge is to blend the chemical nature of raw materials with fabrication techniques and processability, all of which are diametrically conflicting for textiles and conventional energy storage devices. A team from Indian Institute of Technology Bombay has come out with a comprehensive approach involving simple and facile steps to fabricate a wearable energy storage device. Several scientific and technological challenges were overcome during this process.

First, to achieve user-comfort and computability with clothing, the scaffold employed was the the same as what a regular fabric is made up of – cellulose fibers. However, cotton yarns are electrical insulators and therefore practically useless for any electronics. Therefore, the yarns are coated with single-wall carbon nanotubes (SWNTs).

SWNTs are hollow, cylindrical allotropes of carbon and combine excellent mechanical strength with electrical conductivity and surface area. Such a coating converts the electrical insulating cotton yarn to a metallic conductor with high specific surface area. At the same time, using carbon-based materials ensures that the final material remains light-weight and does not cause user discomfort that can arise from metallic wires such as copper and gold. This CNT-coated cotton yarn (CNT-wires) forms the electrode for the energy storage device.

Next, the electrolyte is composed of solid-state electrolyte sheets since no liquid-state electrolytes can be used for this purpose. However, solid state electrolytes suffer from poor ionic conductivity – a major disadvantage for energy storage applications. Therefore, a steam-based infiltration approach that enhances the ionic conductivity of the electrolyte is adopted. Such enhancement of humidity significantly increases the energy storage capacity of the device.


The integration of the CNT-wire electrode with the electrolyte sheet was carried out by a simple and elegant approach of interweaving the CNT-wire through the electrolyte (see Figure 1). This resulted in cross-intersections which are actually junctions where the electrical energy can be stored. Each such junction is now an energy storage unit, referred to as sewcap.

The advantage of this process is that several 100s and 1000s of sewcaps can be made in a small area and integrated to increase the total amount of energy stored in the system. This scalability is unique and critical aspect of this work and stems from the approach of interweaving.

Further, this process is completely adaptable with current processes used in textile industries. Hence, a proportionately large energy-storage is achieved by creating sewcap-junctions in various combinations.

All components of the final sewcap device are flexible. However, they need to be protected from environmental effects such as temperature, humidity and sweat while retaining the mechanical flexibility. This is achieved by laminating the entire device between polymer sheets. The process is exactly similar to the one used for protecting documents and ID cards.

The laminated sewcap can be integrated easily on clothing and fabrics while retaining the flexibility and sturdiness. This is demonstrated by the unchanged performance of the device during extreme and harsh mechanical testing such as striking repeatedly with a hammer, complete flexing, bending and rolling and washing in a laundry machine.

In fact, this is the first device that has been proven to be stable under rigorous washing conditions in the presence of hot water, detergents and high torque (spinning action of washing machine). This provides the device with comprehensive mechanical stability.


CNTs have high surface area and electrical conductivity. The CNT-wire combines these properties of CNTs with stability and porosity of cellulose yarns. The junction created by interweaving is essentially comprised of two such CNT-wires that are sandwiching an electrolyte. Application of potential difference leads to polarization of the electrolyte thus enabling energy storage similar to the way in which a conventional capacitor acts.

“We use the advantage of the interweaving process and create several such junctions. So, with each junction being able to store a certain amount of electrical energy, all the junctions synchronized are able to store a large amount of energy. This provides high energy density to the device,” Prof. C. Subramaniam, Department of Chemistry, IIT Bombay and corresponding author of the paper points out.

The device has also been employed for lighting up an LED [light-emitting diode]. This can be potentially scaled to provide electrical energy demanded by the application.

This image accompanies the paper written by Prof. C. Subramaniam and his team,

Courtesy: IACS Applied Materials Interfaces

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Interwoven Carbon Nanotube Wires for High-Performing, Mechanically Robust, Washable, and Wearable Supercapacitors by Mihir Kumar Jha, Kenji Hata, and Chandramouli Subramaniam. ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces, Article ASAP DOI: 10.1021/acsami.8b22233 Publication Date (Web): April 29, 2019 Copyright © 2019 American Chemical Society

This paper is behind a paywall.

Canada

A research team from the University of British Columbia (UBC at the Okanagan Campus) joined the pack with a May 16, 2019 news item on ScienceDaily,

Forget the smart watch. Bring on the smart shirt.

Researchers at UBC Okanagan’s School of Engineering have developed a low-cost sensor that can be interlaced into textiles and composite materials. While the research is still new, the sensor may pave the way for smart clothing that can monitor human movement.

A May 16, 2019 UBC news release (also on EurekAlert), which originated the news item, describes the work in more detail,


“Microscopic sensors are changing the way we monitor machines and humans,” says Hoorfar, lead researcher at the Advanced Thermo-Fluidic Lab at UBC’s Okanagan campus. “Combining the shrinking of technology along with improved accuracy, the future is very bright in this area.”

This ‘shrinking technology’ uses a phenomenon called piezo-resistivity—an electromechanical response of a material when it is under strain. These tiny sensors have shown a great promise in detecting human movements and can be used for heart rate monitoring or temperature control, explains Hoorfar.

Her research, conducted in partnership with UBC Okanagan’s Materials and Manufacturing Research Institute, shows the potential of a low-cost, sensitive and stretchable yarn sensor. The sensor can be woven into spandex material and then wrapped into a stretchable silicone sheath. This sheath protects the conductive layer against harsh conditions and allows for the creation of washable wearable sensors.

While the idea of smart clothing—fabrics that can tell the user when to hydrate, or when to rest—may change the athletics industry, UBC Professor Abbas Milani says the sensor has other uses. It can monitor deformations in fibre-reinforced composite fabrics currently used in advanced industries such as automotive, aerospace and marine manufacturing.

The low-cost stretchable composite sensor has also shown a high sensitivity and can detect small deformations such as yarn stretching as well as out-of-plane deformations at inaccessible places within composite laminates, says Milani, director of the UBC Materials and Manufacturing Research Institute.

The testing indicates that further improvements in its accuracy could be achieved by fine-tuning the sensor’s material blend and improving its electrical conductivity and sensitivity This can eventually make it able to capture major flaws like “fibre wrinkling” during the manufacturing of advanced composite structures such as those currently used in airplanes or car bodies.

“Advanced textile composite materials make the most of combining the strengths of different reinforcement materials and patterns with different resin options,” he says. “Integrating sensor technologies like piezo-resistive sensors made of flexible materials compatible with the host textile reinforcement is becoming a real game-changer in the emerging era of smart manufacturing and current automated industry trends.”

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Graphene‐Coated Spandex Sensors Embedded into Silicone Sheath for Composites Health Monitoring and Wearable Applications by Hossein Montazerian, Armin Rashidi, Arash Dalili, Homayoun Najjaran, Abbas S. Milani, Mina Hoorfar. Small Volume15, Issue17 April 26, 2019 1804991 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/smll.201804991 First published: 28 March 2019

This paper is behind a paywall.

Will there be one winner or will they find CNTs better for one type of wearable tech textile while graphene excels for another type of wearable tech textile?

Wearable technology: two types of sensors one from the University of Glasgow (Scotland) and the other from the University of British Columbia (Canada)

Sometimes it’s good to try and pull things together.

University of Glasgow and monitoring chronic conditions

A February 23, 2018 news item on phys.org describes the latest wearable tech from the University of Glasgow,

A new type of flexible, wearable sensor could help people with chronic conditions like diabetes avoid the discomfort of regular pin-prick blood tests by monitoring the chemical composition of their sweat instead.

In a new paper published in the journal Biosensors and Bioelectronics, a team of scientists from the University of Glasgow’s School of Engineering outline how they have built a stretchable, wireless system which is capable of measuring the pH level of users’ sweat.

A February 22, 2018 University of Glasgow press release, which originated the news item, expands on the theme,

Ravinder Dahiya

 Courtesy: University of Glasgow

 

Sweat, like blood, contains chemicals generated in the human body, including glucose and urea. Monitoring the levels of those chemicals in sweat could help clinicians diagnose and monitor chronic conditions such as diabetes, kidney disease and some types of cancers without invasive tests which require blood to be drawn from patients.

However, non-invasive, wearable systems require consistent contact with skin to offer the highest-quality monitoring. Current systems are made from rigid materials, making it more difficult to ensure consistent contact, and other potential solutions such as adhesives can irritate skin. Wireless systems which use Bluetooth to transmit their information are also often bulky and power-hungry, requiring frequent recharging.

The University of Glasgow team’s new system is built around an inexpensively-produced sensor capable of measuring pH levels which can stretch and flex to better fit the contours of users’ bodies. Made from a graphite-polyurethane composite and measuring around a single square centimetre, it can stretch up to 53% in length without compromising performance. It will also continue to work after being subjected to flexes of 30% up to 500 times, which the researchers say will allow it to be used comfortably on human skin with minimal impact on the performance of the sensor.

The sensor can transmit its data wirelessly, and without external power, to an accompanying smartphone app called ‘SenseAble’, also developed by the team. The transmissions use near-field communication, a data transmission system found in many current smartphones which is used most often for smartphone payments like ApplePay, via a stretchable RFID antenna integrated into the system – another breakthrough innovation from the research team.

The smartphone app allows users to track pH levels in real time and was demonstrated in the lab using a chemical solution created by the researchers which mimics the composition of human sweat.

The research was led by Professor Ravinder Dahiya, head of the University of Glasgow’s School of Engineering’s Bendable Electronics and Sensing Technologies (BEST) group.

Professor Dahiya said: “Human sweat contains much of the same physiological information that blood does, and its use in diagnostic systems has the significant advantage of not needing to break the skin in order to administer tests.

“Now that we’ve demonstrated that our stretchable system can be used to monitor pH levels, we’ve already begun additional research to expand the capabilities of the sensor and make it a more complete diagnostic system. We’re planning to add sensors capable of measuring glucose, ammonia and urea, for example, and ultimately we’d like to see a system ready for market in the next few years.”

The team’s paper, titled ‘Stretchable Wireless System for Sweat pH Monitoring’, is published in Biosensors and Bioelectronics. The research was supported by funding from the European Commission and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Stretchable wireless system for sweat pH monitoring by Wenting Dang, Libu Manjakkal, William Taube Navaraj, Leandro Lorenzelli, Vincenzo Vinciguerra. Biosensors and Bioelectronics Volume 107, 1 June 2018, Pages 192–202 [Available online February 2018] https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bios.2018.02.025

This paper is behind a paywall.

University of British Columbia (UBC; Okanagan) and monitor bio-signals

This is a completely other type of wearable tech monitor, from a February 22, 2018 UBC news release (also on EurekAlert) by Patty Wellborn (A link has been removed),

Creating the perfect wearable device to monitor muscle movement, heart rate and other tiny bio-signals without breaking the bank has inspired scientists to look for a simpler and more affordable tool.

Now, a team of researchers at UBC’s Okanagan campus have developed a practical way to monitor and interpret human motion, in what may be the missing piece of the puzzle when it comes to wearable technology.

What started as research to create an ultra-stretchable sensor transformed into a sophisticated inter-disciplinary project resulting in a smart wearable device that is capable of sensing and understanding complex human motion, explains School of Engineering Professor Homayoun Najjaran.

The sensor is made by infusing graphene nano-flakes (GNF) into a rubber-like adhesive pad. Najjaran says they then tested the durability of the tiny sensor by stretching it to see if it can maintain accuracy under strains of up to 350 per cent of its original state. The device went through more than 10,000 cycles of stretching and relaxing while maintaining its electrical stability.

“We tested this sensor vigorously,” says Najjaran. “Not only did it maintain its form but more importantly it retained its sensory functionality. We have further demonstrated the efficacy of GNF-Pad as a haptic technology in real-time applications by precisely replicating the human finger gestures using a three-joint robotic finger.”

The goal was to make something that could stretch, be flexible and a reasonable size, and have the required sensitivity, performance, production cost, and robustness. Unlike an inertial measurement unit—an electronic unit that measures force and movement and is used in most step-based wearable technologies—Najjaran says the sensors need to be sensitive enough to respond to different and complex body motions. That includes infinitesimal movements like a heartbeat or a twitch of a finger, to large muscle movements from walking and running.

School of Engineering Professor and study co-author Mina Hoorfar says their results may help manufacturers create the next level of health monitoring and biomedical devices.

“We have introduced an easy and highly repeatable fabrication method to create a highly sensitive sensor with outstanding mechanical and electrical properties at a very low cost,” says Hoorfar.

To demonstrate its practicality, researchers built three wearable devices including a knee band, a wristband and a glove. The wristband monitored heartbeats by sensing the pulse of the artery. In an entirely different range of motion, the finger and knee bands monitored finger gestures and larger scale muscle movements during walking, running, sitting down and standing up. The results, says Hoorfar, indicate an inexpensive device that has a high-level of sensitivity, selectivity and durability.

Hoorfar and Najjaran are both members of the Okanagan node of UBC’s STITCH (SmarT Innovations for Technology Connected Health) Institute that creates and investigates advanced wearable devices.

The research, partially funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, was recently published in the Journal of Sensors and Actuators A: Physical.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Low-cost ultra-stretchable strain sensors for monitoring human motion and bio-signals by Seyed Reza Larimi, Hojatollah Rezaei Nejad, Michael Oyatsi, Allen O’Brien, Mina Hoorfar, Homayoun Najjaran. Sensors and Actuators A: Physical Volume 271, 1 March 2018, Pages 182-191 [Published online February 2018] https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sna.2018.01.028

This paper is behind a paywall.

Final comments

The term ‘wearable tech’ covers a lot of ground. In addition to sensors, there are materials that harvest energy, detect poisons, etc.  making for a diverse field.