ADVANCEMENTS IN SMART TEXTILES: A COMPREHENSIVE STUDY ON THE INTEGRATION OF CONDUCTIVE MATERIALS FOR WEARABLE HEALTH MONITORING SYSTEMS

Abstract

Smart textiles hold the promise of obviating personal environmental exposures and physiological responses to be measured unobtrusively, but design guidelines that tie the conductive material choice to field performance are still diffuse. The integrated four representative platforms graphene-coated cotton, CNT yarn, PEDOT: PSS on polyester, and silver-nanowire mesh into a garment-centric workflow that synchronises pollutant (PM₂.₅, NO₂, O₃), microclimate (temperature, humidity, UV), and physiology (heart rate, skin temperature, electrodermal activity, respiration) across naturalistic activities. The standardised metadata, time alignment, and exposure categorization allowed the same multi-domain analyses.

Findings indicated realistic exposure distributions and high co-variation among the environmental variables; there were typically small environment-physiology associations once activity was controlled. Comparisons of materials revealed systematic trade-offs: silver-nanowire networks were capable of the highest conductivity but wash-life, CNT/composite yarns could be used to provide stable sensing with longer life, graphene and PEDOT: PSS coatings were balanced where comfort and breathability matter. Power usage was proportional to activity, which emphasised co-designing with energy management or harvesting. Together, the platform is feasible and provides practical advice: choose materials by garment zone and sensing role, impose time-synchronisation and context labelling, and combine correlation-strength visualisation with model cheques to infer interpretably. These results map a scalable route between lab prototypes and deployment-scale textile systems to environmental-health monitoring.