Kushal Sen
Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, India
Title: Non-metallic electrically conducting textiles: The potential
Biography
Biography: Kushal Sen
Abstract
Textiles, as we know, are polymeric and are electrically non-conducting. However, these are extremely flexible and comfortable. It has been of considerable interest to limited electrical conductivity through finishing treatment or through insertion of metallic fibers mainly to dissipate the static charge generated during use. The advent of intrinsically conducting polymers, however, has opened new vistas of applications wherein the flexibility of textiles could be suitably combined with the electrical conductivity of ICPs. The present paper gives an account of the research conducted by the team at IIT Delhi on in situ polymerization onto textiles of monomers such as pyrrole and thiophene using chemical and electro-chemical polymerization. Discussed in this paper are some fundamentals associated with polymerization process. In the case of electrochemical polymerization, it has been found that with the precise control of the relevant process parameters, uniform, rapid and reproducible polymerization can be achieved which can help to precisely control the polymer yield, as long as there is sufficient monomer concentration and requisite surface area for polymer deposition. The paper also discusses the potential and possible application areas of the electro-conductive textiles.