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Next to metal fibres or wires, also carbon fibres can be incorporated into conventional fibres. Another
method additionally is to produce hollow Nylon or polyester fibres and fill them with carbon.
As an example the No-Shock TM fibre by the company Monsanto can be pointed out. It is a nylon fibre
having an integrated carbon-filled stripe comprising 2% of the polymer. Further, the company offers
staple fibres, available in finenesses of 6 or 12 den, which can be cut depending on the specification
[16].
As mentioned before, there are also intrinsically conductive polymeric fibres existing. A research group
at the Intelligent Polymer Research Institute, University of Wollongong, in Australia succeeded in
synthesise organic conducting fibres. Via wet spinning they produced fibres out of Polyaniline and
carbon nanotube dispersion.
Fig. 4 PANi-CNT fibre viewed with scanning electron microscope [17]
Due to their high conductivity, the fibres can be possibly used as light weight wearable batteries or as
artificial muscles in a rehabilitation glove.
Specially treated conductive fibres
Electrically conductive fibres can also be produced by coating the fibres with metals, galvanic
substances or metallic salts. The advantage of coatings is that they are suitable for many fibre types
and they produce good conductivity without significantly altering existing substrate properties such as
density, flexibility and handle. Coatings can be applied to the surface of fibres, yarns, or even fabrics
to create electrically conductive textiles. Nevertheless adhesion between the metal and the fibre as
well corrosion resistance can lead to problems.
Common textile coating processes include electroless plating, evaporative deposition, sputtering, and
coating the textile with a conductive polymer.
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