Piezoelectric Nylon-11 Fibers for Electronic Textiles, Energy Harvesting and Sensing

Electronic textiles and functional fabrics are among the key constituents envisioned for wearable electronics applications. For e-textiles, the challenge is to process materials of desired electronic properties such as piezoelectricity into fibers to be integrated as wefts or wraps in the fabrics. Nylons, first introduced in the 1940s for stockings, are among the most widely used synthetic fibers in textiles. However, realization of nylon-based e-textiles has remained elusive due to the difficulty of achieving the piezoelectric phase in the nylon fibers. Here, piezoelectric nylon-11 fibers are demonstrated and it is shown that the resulting fibers are viable for applications in energy harvesting from low frequency mechanical vibrations and in motion sensors. A simulation study is presented that elucidates on the sensitivity of the nylon-11 fibers toward external mechanical stimuli. Moreover, a strategy is proposed and validated to significantly boost the electrical performance of the fibers. Since a large fraction of the textile industry is based on nylon fibers, the demonstration of piezoelectric nylon fibers will be a major step toward realization of electronic textiles for applications in apparels, health monitoring, sportswear, and portable energy generation.