Electro-conductive yarns: their development, characterization and applications

Over the last decade extensive research has been on the way to provide textile structures with electro-conductive properties that are applied in smart textiles. Their potential use is diverse and ranges from rather passive sensors to active components, such as heating elements. For these applications textiles need to offer excellent electro-conductive properties combined with a high flexibility and drapability. This can be achieved by coating textile structures with a thin metallic layer or by combining pure metallic yarns or filaments with conventional yarns during spinning. In this dissertation, targeting on the development of different electro-conductive yarns, these two technologies are drawn on. The chemical deposition of non-conductive yarns with copper and gold was explored before the resulting metal layers were characterized. Furthermore, hollow spindle spinning was applied to produce yarns consisting of an elastic core yarn and conductive winded yarns. The yarn's electro-conductive properties were examined under different use-oriented scenarios. Finally, a framework was set for the two different yarn types for their later application in smart textiles