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INTRODUCTION

Electronic textiles or E-textiles represent the next generation of fibres, fabrics and articles produced from them. They can be described as textile materials that think for themselves, for example through the incorporation of electronic devices or smart materials. Many intelligent textiles already feature in advanced types of clothing, principally for protection and safety and for added fashion or convenience.

One of the main reasons for the rapid development of intelligent textiles is the important investment make by the military industry. This is because they are used in different projects such as extreme winter condition jackets or uniforms that change colour so as to improve camouflage effects. Nowadays, the military industry has become aware of the advantage of sharing knowledge with the various industrial sectors, because with joint collaboration far better results can be obtained through team-work.

E-textiles provide ample evidence of the potential and enormous wealth of opportunities still to be realised in the textile industry in the fashion and clothing sector, as well as in the technical textiles sector. Moreover, these developments will be the result of active collaboration between people from a whole variety of backgrounds and disciplines: engineering, science, design, process development, and business and marketing. Our very day-to-day lives will, within the next few years, be significantly regulated by intelligent devices and many of these devices will be in textiles and clothing.

CLASSIFICATION OF ELECTRONIC TEXTILES:

E-textiles are defined as textiles that can sense and react to environmental conditions or stimuli from mechanical, thermal, chemical, electrical or magnetic sources.
According to functional activity smart textiles can be classified in three categories:

• Passive E-Textiles: The first generations of smart textiles, which can only sense the environmental conditions or stimulus, are called Passive Smart Textiles.
• Active E-Textiles: The second generation has both actuators and sensors. The actuators act upon the detected signal either directly or from a central control unit. Active Smart textiles are shape memory, chameleonic, water-resistant and vapour permeable (hydrophilic/non porous), heat storage, thermo regulated, vapour absorbing, heat evolving fabric and electrically heated suits.
• Ultra E-Textiles: Very smart textiles are the third generation of smart textiles, which can sense, react and adopt themselves to environmental conditions or stimuli. A very smart or intelligent textile essentially consists of a unit, which works like the brain, with cognition, reasoning and activating capacities. The production of very smart textiles is now a reality after a successful marriage of traditional textiles and clothing technology with other branches of science like material science, structural mechanics, sensor and actuator technology, advance processing technology, communication, artificial intelligence, biology etc.
New fibre and textile materials, and miniaturized electronic components make the preparation of smart textiles possible, in order to create truly usable smart clothes. These intelligent clothes are worn like ordinary clothing, providing help in various situations according to the designed applications.