Chapter 12 - Carbon Nanotube Fibers for Wearable Devices

Abstract

To meet the rapid development of portable electronics, wearable devices with a typically fibrous format have attracted great interest recently. Because of their unique structure, wearable electronics exhibit high flexibility and can be easily integrated into other textiles by conventional weaving techniques. The development of wearable electronics had been greatly limited by conventionally fibrous electrodes until the carbon nanotube (CNT) fiber was introduced for use as electrodes in wearable electronics. CNTs with excellent electrical and mechanical properties can be easily assembled into a macroscopic one-dimensional fiber by various methods. The developed CNT fibers exhibit high electrical conductivity, tensile strength, and flexibility, and together represent an ideal candidate as a fiber electrode for wearable electronics. To date, wearable electronics varying from solar cells to supercapacitors to batteries have been developed based on CNT fiber electrodes, and great achievements have been made. In this chapter, fabrication and properties of CNT fiber will be summarized first, then the recent progress on wearable electronics based on CNT fiber will be reviewed.