According to foreign media reports, Rice University researchers recently demonstrated a clothing with carbon nanotubes that can continuously monitor the wearer's heart. There's no need to wear an uncomfortable smartwatch or chest strap to monitor your heart if your comfortable clothing does a better job. That's the idea behind "smart clothing" developed by a Rice University lab that uses its conductive nanowires to weave functionality into regular clothing.
Matteo Pasquali, a chemical and biomolecular engineer at the school's Brown School of Engineering, reports in Nano Letters, a journal of the American Chemical Society, that it sewn nanotube fibers into sportswear to monitor heart rate and perform continuous electrocardiographic monitoring of the wearer. .
Menurut para peneliti, serat bersifat konduktif seperti kabel logam, tetapi dapat dicuci, nyaman, dan lebih kecil kemungkinannya untuk putus saat tubuh bergerak. Secara keseluruhan, pakaian mereka yang disempurnakan lebih baik dalam mengumpulkan data daripada monitor tali-dada standar yang melakukan pengukuran lapangan dalam eksperimen. Ketika dicocokkan dengan monitor elektroda medis komersial, garmen karbon nanotube tampil sedikit lebih baik pada EKG.
"The garment had to fit snugly against the chest," said Rice graduate student Lauren Taylor, lead author of the study. "In future research, we will focus on using denser blocks of carbon nanowires so that there is more surface area to contact the skin."
Para peneliti menunjukkan bahwa serat nanotube lembut dan elastis, dan pakaian yang menggabungkannya dapat dicuci dengan mesin. Serat-serat ini dapat dijahit dengan mesin pada kain seperti benang standar. Pola jahitan zigzag memungkinkan kain meregang tanpa merusaknya.
The fibers not only provide a stable electrical contact with the wearer's skin, Taylor said, but also act as electrodes to connect electronic devices such as Bluetooth transmitters, relay data to smartphones, or connect to Holter monitors that can fit in the user's pocket. device.
Pasquali's lab introduced carbon nanotube fibers in 2013. Since then, fibers containing tens of billions of nanotubes each have been studied to repair bridges in damaged hearts, as electrical interfaces to the brain, for cochlear implants, as flexible antennas, and for automotive and aerospace applications. Their development is also part of the Rice-based Carbon Center, a multi-university research initiative led by Rice and launched in 2019.
Filamen nanotube asli memiliki lebar sekitar 22 mikron, terlalu tipis untuk ditangani oleh mesin jahit. Sebuah pembuat tali digunakan untuk membuat benang yang bisa dijahit, pada dasarnya tiga bundel dari tujuh filamen masing-masing, ditenun dengan ukuran yang kira-kira sama dengan benang biasa, kata Taylor.
"We worked with a guy who sold a little machine designed to make ropes for model boats," says Taylor, who initially tried to weave the thread by hand with limited success. "He was able to make us a mid-scale device that could do that."
Pola zig-zag dapat disesuaikan untuk memperhitungkan seberapa banyak peregangan pakaian olahraga atau kain lainnya, katanya. Taylor mengatakan tim bekerja dengan Dr. Mehdi Razavi dan rekan-rekannya di Texas Heart Institute untuk mencari cara memaksimalkan kontak kulit.
Serat yang ditenun ke dalam kain juga bisa digunakan untuk memasang antena atau LED, kata para peneliti. Sedikit modifikasi pada geometri serat dan elektronik terkait pada akhirnya dapat memungkinkan pakaian untuk memantau tanda-tanda vital, upaya, atau laju pernapasan.
Other potential uses could include human-machine interfaces in cars or soft robots, or as antennas, health monitors and bulletproof protection for military uniforms, Taylor noted. "We demonstrated with a collaborator a few years ago that carbon nanotube fibers dissipate energy better per unit weight than Kevlar fibers, and that's without some of our later progress in tensile strength," she said. "
"We're seeing this material play a role in more and more applications after 20 years of development in laboratories around the world," Pasquali said. "Carbon nanotubes are a natural building block for wearable devices due to their combination of electrical conductivity, good skin contact, biocompatibility and softness."
Pasar perangkat yang dapat dikenakan, meskipun relatif kecil, dapat menjadi titik masuk untuk generasi baru bahan berkelanjutan yang dapat diekstraksi dari hidrokarbon melalui pemisahan langsung, sebuah proses yang juga menghasilkan hidrogen bersih, katanya. Mengembangkan bahan ini adalah fokus dari Carbon Center.
"We are in the same situation as solar cells were decades ago," Pasquali said. "We need application leaders that can power scale-up of production and improve efficiency."