Electroactive Textile Actuators for Breathability Control and Thermal Regulation Devices
by
Chaoqun Xiang 1,†
, Jianglong Guo 1,*,†, Rujie Sun 2, Andrew Hinitt 1, Tim Helps 1, Majid Taghavi 1 and Jonathan Rossiter 1
Chaoqun Xiang 1,†, Jianglong Guo 1,*,†, Rujie Sun 2, Andrew Hinitt 1, Tim Helps 1, Majid Taghavi 1 and Jonathan Rossiter 1
1
SoftLab, Bristol Robotics Laboratory, University of Bristol, Bristol BS16 1QY, UK
2
Bristol Composites Institute (ACCIS), University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1TR, UK
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
†
These authors contributed equally to this work.
Polymers 2019, 11(7), 1199; https://doi.org/10.3390/polym11071199
Received: 27 May 2019 / Revised: 3 July 2019 / Accepted: 16 July 2019 / Published: 18 July 2019
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Innovative Functional Textiles)
Smart fabrics offer the potential for a new generation of soft robotics and wearable technologies through the fusion of smart materials, textiles and electrical circuitries. Conductive and stretchable textiles have inherent compliance and low resistance that are suitable for driving artificial muscle actuators and are potentially safer electrode materials for soft actuation technologies. We demonstrate how soft electroactive actuating structures can be designed and fabricated from conducting textiles. We first quantitatively analyse a range of stretchable conductive textiles for dielectric elastomer actuators (DEAs). We found that conductive-knit textiles are more suitable for unidirectional DEA applications due to the largest difference (150%) in principle strain axes, whereas isotropic textiles are more suited to bidirectional DEA applications due to the smallest (11.1%) principle strain difference. Finally, we demonstrate controllable breathability through a planar e-textile DEA-driven skin and show thermal regulation in a wearable prototype that exploits soft actuation and kirigami.
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This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
MDPI and ACS Style
Xiang, C.; Guo, J.; Sun, R.; Hinitt, A.; Helps, T.; Taghavi, M.; Rossiter, J. Electroactive Textile Actuators for Breathability Control and Thermal Regulation Devices. Polymers 2019, 11, 1199.
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