Carbon-based electronic textiles: materials, fabrication processes and applications

Electronic textiles (E-textiles) impart the conductive functionality in textiles without altering the intrinsic properties of textile materials. The growth of E-textiles requires the development of functional materials and the scaling-up of their production methods. Since textile is a porous, and anisotropic three-dimensional material, it is crucial to develop the scalable methods to apply these functional materials on textiles efficiently that can impart added functionality to the pristine textile materials. Organic carbon-based functional materials are being widely used for the comparative low-cost manufacturing process and the availability of their raw materials. Thus, the overview of the different carbonaceous conductive materials and their application methods on textiles is very important to understand and compare for utilizing these materials efficiently in numerous E-textile applications. This paper reviews the fabrication procedures of the common carbon-based electronic materials, the methods of formulating colloidal suspensions of different carbonaceous particles in the liquid solvent to develop conductive inks, the methods to apply the inks on textile substrates, and relevant use cases. A critical review has been discussed to compare and select appropriate materials and their application methods on textiles for the scalable manufacturing process and desired electrical characteristics.