Emergence of Technology - Shaping Up

Introduction

Since ages, man has quest to search for new things. His thirst for knowledge opens up various doors for new innovations. These innovations get complex with time to time and sciences add new dimensions even in textile industry.

If we peep into the historic scale, it started with simple hand-woven fabric passing through handlooms, going up with the automatic looms and machinery and now stretches up to infinity with the help of technology like Nanotechnology and biotechnology.

Life is getting more complex, so all things need more revolutionary changes to match the standards of the survival of man in more diverse situations. This is true for the whole textile industry. Day by day, new things add their values in the textile industry ranging from fabric making to new developments in machinery, threads, and design pattern, laundry washing and even in technical skills. Some of the new developments in various fields in textile are as follows:

Fabric

The Electrical conducting fabric is a new innovation in the field of smart textiles. These kinds of textiles have been created by coating of conducting polymers on the surface of the fabric. This could be either conducting yarns/fibers as a mixture component of yarn.

The different processes of conductive coatings can be developed through evaporative deposition, electrolyte plating, coating with a conductive polymer and sputtering, loading or filling fibers and carbonizing.

To control the Electro Magnetic Emissions and shield sensitive electronics from unwanted Electro Magnetic Emissions, cotton fabrics are saturated with polypyrrole and polyaniline. The fabrics have peizoresistive properties which are coated with conducted polymer polyrrole. A mixture of carbon and rubber also has piezoresistive properties and can be used for detecting the local strain on the fabric.

Elelectro textiles are garments or fabrics which have electronics woven into them. E-textiles have high physical flexibility in size. These electro textiles are a combination of technology, electronics and textile structures. Some electronic components are built in thin flexible fabric materials. Polymer wires are also used to make fabric flexible and durable. For use in the medical field, some jackets are also developed which are made with sensors and actuators. These kinds of materials are known as ?Interactive textiles? or ?Smart textiles?.

One new emergence is the wide use of Polyurethane. Polyurethane is a chain of organic units of urethane and thus, it is a polymer. Polyurethane is used in making synthetic fibers. Polyurethane is an elastomer and when used in fiber, it gives high performance. High-performance polyurethane foam is used in basketball sneakers.

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