Journal
MEASUREMENT SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
Volume 25, Issue 2, Pages -Publisher
IOP PUBLISHING LTD
DOI: 10.1088/0957-0233/25/2/025006
Keywords
screen printing; flexible electronics; smart textiles
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This paper examines the durability of screen-printed conductive tracks on textiles. These tracks are composed of a silver polymer paste as a conductive layer, which is fully encapsulated with polyurethane. The polyurethane materials and layer structures used to encapsulate the textile are varied and each structure is tested in a cyclic mandrel machine to simulate the effects of normal wear and tear. These results are compared to a MATLAB model of the strain in the conductive track, relating the predicted strain on the conductive layer to the measured resistance change. From these results, a batch of structures with high durability are fabricated and these are machine washed. It was found that 97.1% of the conductive tracks remained conductive after ten domestic machine washes with a 1 kg load at 40 degrees C and 1000 rpm spin speed. This compares with 8.9% which remained conductive before optimization. This optimization process has therefore led to over ten times improvement in durability for screen-printed conductive tracks on textiles.
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