Highly Stretchable Conductive Fibers, 2010 Innovative Nonwovens Conference

Please Note: This document will be available in PDF format in the "My Electronic Documents" link on the home page once your order has been completed. Please make sure you have the latest version of Acrobat Reader. Click on the Acrobat Reader icon to check for the latest version, it’s FREE. To print a hardcopy of a PDF file correctly you must have a postscript printer. If you are not sure if your printer is a postscript printer please refer to your owner’s manual.

This presentation will describe the fabrication and characterization of highly stretchable fibers with metallic conductivity. Conductive fibers may be useful for incorporating electronic functionality into textiles, non-wovens, and other substrates for military, medical, filtration, ergonomic and kinesiological applications. It is desirable to add electronic functionality to fibers without degrading their other properties. Toward this goal, we created conductive fibers consisting of a fluid metal alloy injected into the core of hollow fibers composed of a commercially available thermoplastic elastomer (Pebax). The fibers adopt the mechanical properties of the elastomer and maintain electrical continuity when stretched since the fluid metal flows in response to stress.