Interactive Electronic Textile Technologies

Electronic textiles can be created by using minute electrically conductive fibers. These metallic fibers have been used for years in various industrial applications for the purpose of controlling static and electromagnetic interference shielding. Today, metallic fibers are finding new applications in the development of electronic textiles. Electrically conductive fibers can be classified into two general categories, those that are naturally conductive and those that are specially treated to create conductivity.

Naturally conductive fibers or metallic fibers are developed from electrically conductive metals such as ferrous alloys, nickel, stainless steel, titanium, aluminum, copper, and carbon. Metal fibers are very thin metal filaments, with diameters ranging from 1 to 80 microns (µm). Officially called a micrometer, a micron (µm) is one thousandth of a millimeter. To illustrate the fineness of a metallic fiber of 1 µm, a comparison can be made between these fibers and the diameter of a strand of human hair which ranges between 70 and 100 µm.

Metallic fibers are typically produced by either using a bundle-drawing process or by a shaving process. The bundle-drawing process consists of bundling several fine metal wires then drawing them continuously and simultaneously from source metals.