A study of the functionality of conventional pigmented inks in furnishing electrical conductivity to textiles

Abstract

Electronic textiles technologies are finding widespread use in numerous sectors of our daily lives. One of the main enabling technologies for e-textiles is the additive deposition of functional material. The functional coatings that are used for such applications are based on a variety of materials such as conductive polymers, carbon-based materials, metals etc. There are several limitations associated generally with the commercially available conductive inks for non-textile substrates. The major limitations include (but are not limited to) high cost, inferior performance in terms of washing and creasing and difficulty in application, etc. In this study, we have evaluated two commercially available conductive inks and compared their washing and creasing performance with a conventional pigment printing system