An investigation into the durability of screen-printed conductive tracks on textiles

Abstract

This paper examines the durability of screen-printed conductive tracks on textiles. These tracks are composed of a silver polymer paste as a conductive layer, which is fully encapsulated with polyurethane. The polyurethane materials and layer structures used to encapsulate the textile are varied and each structure is tested in a cyclic mandrel machine to simulate the effects of normal wear and tear. These results are compared to a MATLAB model of the strain in the conductive track, relating the predicted strain on the conductive layer to the measured resistance change. From these results, a batch of structures with high durability are fabricated and these are machine washed. It was found that 97.1% of the conductive tracks remained conductive after ten domestic machine washes with a 1 kg load at 40 °C and 1000 rpm spin speed. This compares with 8.9% which remained conductive before optimization. This optimization process has therefore led to over ten times improvement in durability for screen-printed conductive tracks on textiles.