Soft capacitor fibers for electronic textiles

A highly flexible, conductive polymer-based fiber with high electric capacitance is reported. The fiber is fabricated using fiber drawing method, where a multimaterial macroscopic preform is drawn into a submillimeter capacitor microstructured fiber. A typical measured capacitance per unit length of our fibers is 60-100 nF/m which is about 3 orders magnitude higher than that of a coaxial cable of a comparable diameter. The fiber has a transverse resistivity of 5 k Omega m. Softness, lightweight, absence of liquid electrolyte, and ease of scalability to large production volumes make the fibers interesting for various smart textile applications. (C) 2010 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3488351]