Overview of wearable electronics and smart textiles

Protection and esthetics are the two common characteristics typically associated with textiles as clothing. Nevertheless, with the quickly altering needs of today’s consumers, a third characteristic is rising – that of “intelligence” – that is being integrated into fabrics to produce interactive or textiles (or i-textiles). The term electronic textiles, or e-textiles, are used to denote the class of fabric structures that integrate electronic elements with textiles and can sense changes in its environment and respond to it. This new class of wearable electronic systems is being designed to meet new and innovative applications in the military, public safety, healthcare, space exploration, sports, and consumer fitness fields. The goal of this paper is to focus on recent advances in the field of Smart Textiles and pay particular attention to the materials and their manufacturing process. Each technique shows advantages and disadvantages and the aim of this study is to improve the overall usability of smart clothing products by reviewing all developments which have been done in this case in order to straighten the path for future investigations and researches in this field.