Abstract
In this work, two embroidered textile moisture sensors are characterized with three different conductive yarns. The sensors are based on a capacitive interdigitated structure embroidered on a cotton substrate with an embroidered conductor yarn. The performance comparison of three different type of conductive yarns has been addressed. In order to evaluate the sensor sensitivity, the impedance of the sensor has been measured by means of an LCR meter from 20 Hz to 20 kHz on a climatic chamber with a sweep of the relative humidity from 30% to 65% at 20 °C. The experimental results show a clear and controllable dependence of the sensor impedance with the relative humidity and the chosen conductor yarns. This dependence points out the optimum conductive yarn to be used to develop wearable applications for moisture measurement.
Highlights
Nowadays, there is a huge demand on the research and development of wearable sensors for biological sensing applications [1,2] like health monitoring, physical training [3], emergency rescue service and law-enforcement [4]
If we focus on the electrical model according to the measured behaviour of the proposed sensors at 2 kHz, they can be modelled as a RC parallel lumped model (Figure 7b), where the R and C values are moisture dependent
The sensors have been embroidered over a cotton substrate with a commercial Shieldex 117/17 dtex www.mdpi.com/journal/sensors
Summary
There is a huge demand on the research and development of wearable sensors for biological sensing applications [1,2] like health monitoring, physical training [3], emergency rescue service and law-enforcement [4]. In order to develop these sensors, fabric substrates have been revealed as a natural and convenient choice in the development of wearable electronic applications due to the fact that humans have been covering their body with fabrics for thousands of years. The development of moisture sensors for wearable applications over textiles and outfits is a current research topic This field has been investigated using different methodologies such as carbon nanotubes (CNT) [7], ink-jet technology [8], knitted fabric [9], screen printing [10] and embroidery [10,11]. A comparison of the electrical properties of the embroidered sensor over cotton substrate with several types of conductive yarns are analysed and assessed in the range of 30% RH to 65% RH This is a practical moisture range from the point of view of the human body and it has not been deeply.
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