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The possibility of printing conductive ink on textiles is progressively researched due to its potential benefits in manufacturing functional wearable electronics and improving wearing comfort. However, few studies have reported the effect of conductive ink formulation on electrodes directly screen-printed on flexible substrates, especially printing UV curable conductive ink on common textiles. In this work, a novel UV curable nano-silver ink with short-time curing and low temperature features was developed to manufacture the fully flexible and washable textile-based electrodes by screen printing. The aim of this study was to determine the influence of ink formulation on UV-curing speed, degree of conversion, morphology and electrical properties of printed electrodes. Besides, the application demonstration was highlighted. The curing speed and adhesion of ink was found depending dominantly on the type of prepolymer and the functionality of monomer, and the type of photoinitiator had a decisive effect on the curing speed, degree of double bond conversion and morphology of printed patterns. The nano-silver content is key to guarantee the suitable screen-printability of conductive ink and therefore the uniformity and high conductivity of textile-based electrodes. Optimally, an ink formulation with 60 wt% nano-silver meets the potential application requirements. The electrode with 1.0 mm width showed significantly high electrical conductivity of 2.47 × 106 S/m, outstanding mechanical durability and satisfactory washability. The high-performance of electrodes screen-printed on different fabrics proved the feasibility and utility of UV curable nano-silver ink. In addition, the application potential of the conductive ink in fabricating electronic textiles (e-textiles) was confirmed by using the textile-based electrodes as the cathodes of silver-zinc batteries. We anticipate the developed UV curable conductive ink for screen-printing on textiles can provide a novel design opportunity for flexible and wearable e-textile applications.

The thickness and dielectric properties (dielectric constant and loss tangent) of fabric substrate play a key role in the design and properties of wearable antennas. Related research shows that a thicker substrate with a low dielectric constant and high loss tangent can enhance the bandwidth of antennas. Here, sewing multiple fabrics together was a good way to increase the thickness while maintaining flexibility, but it is hard to control the dielectric properties because of the lack of the relationship between the dielectric properties and that of the components. Although previous works have established the equivalent capacitance model of sewed multilayer fabric, they cannot obtain its dielectric properties completely. In this work, based on the circuit model proposed by Chin and Lee, the equivalent capacitance and resistance models of sewed multilayer fabric were established to predict its loss tangent. The sewed multilayer fabrics were fabricated and measured by split post dielectric resonator at 1.11 GHz to validate the model. From the comparison of the predicted and measured loss tangents of sewed multilayer fabrics, it was found that the predicted loss tangents agreed well with the experimental results. It is believed that the proposed model is beneficial to the rapid and rational configuration of the components for multilayer fabric according to thickness and dielectric properties of the components, and will provide a theoretical basis for the design of multilayer flexible electronic substrate.

To reveal the engineering relationship among the electrical properties of embroidered conductive lines, the electrical properties and arrangements of conductive yarns, it is necessary to establish their equivalent resistance model. Embroidered conductive lines in textiles are usually fabricated by single-layer (conductive and nonconductive yarn used as upper and lower yarn) or double-layer embroidery technology (conductive yarns used as upper and lower yarn). Several researchers have proposed the simple resistance model for single-layer embroidered conductive line based on geometric structure of single conductive yarn in fabric. However, the double-layer conductive line has the contact resistance periodically interlaced by the upper and lower conductive yarns, and it made its equivalent circuit different from that of single-layer conductive line. In this work, a geometric model was built to describe the trace of conductive yarn in fabric, and in combination with Wheatstone Bridge theory, was applied to establish the equivalent resistance models of double-layer conductive lines with a certain width, consisted of various courses. First, the equivalent resistance model of double-layer conductive lines consisting of single course was proposed to calculate the contact resistance. Then, to obtain the electrical resistance of double-layer conductive lines with a certain width, the equivalent resistance model was extended from single course to multiple courses ([Formula: see text]). Finally, to validate the proposed equivalent resistance model, double-layer conductive lines with different embroidery parameters (stitch length and stitch spacing) on nonwoven fabric were fabricated and evaluated. The experimental results revealed that the proposed model accurately predicted the resistances of double-layer conductive lines.

Measuring the dielectric properties of the fabric is much important when it is used as a substrate material for flexible electronic devices. However, the classical resonant cavity is not accurate f...