Exploring the challenges surrounding the laundering of smart textiles, a recent article published in the Journal of the Textile Institute analysed the effect of textile substrates and washing factors (including time, temperature and mechanical action) on the reliability of conductor tracks.

Achieving wider use of smart textiles, according to the abstract, requires enhancing their often still poor usability — with washability as a key requirement. This is particularly true with textile integrated conductor tracks as those tracks “exhibit a higher level of integration into the textile substrates compared to other, often removable components of smart textiles”.

Authors Sigrid Rotzler, Christine Kallmayer, Christian Dils, Malte von Krshiwoblozki, Ulrich Bauer and Martin Schneider-Ramelow assessed changes in conductivity to determine the effects of different washing conditions on different combinations of textile substrate and conductor tracks were determined via changes in conductivity.

“Differing results for each combination do not permit global conclusions about the washability of textile integrated conductor tracks or smart textiles,” according to the abstract for the paper, which is titled Improving the washability of smart textiles: influence of different washing conditions on textile integrated conductor tracks.

“Instead, washability is influenced by the choice and combination of materials as well as methods of integration and processing – important to consider when developing new products.”

Source: Sports Textiles