Intelligent Fibres

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NRC Industrial Materials Institute is actively involved in research and development in the field of intelligent textiles. This R&D has many potential applications, including: textiles, medicine and construction. The research also has industrial applications, and can be applied in the design of sensors or interactive garments.

Figure 1. Electrospun Nafion® nanofibers mat (ion-conducting polymer, 60 nm average diameter) on a melt blown mat of polypropylene (PP).

Types of Intelligent Fibres

Various intelligent fibres under development at NRC-IMI:

• high performance fibres having a superior mechanical and thermal resistance that, when reinforced with nanoparticles for example, have particular qualities that leave them impervious to water or heat;
• conducting fibres devised from conducting polymers or conducting micro/nanoparticles that can more easily be deformed and be better conductors of electricity or heat than the usual plastics;
• piezoelectric fibres that can transmit a signal after deformation and could be used to measure the pulse or muscle contraction;
• chromic/photovoltaic fibres having the ability of changing colour as needed or of generating electricity from light; they could thus warm a garment or power an electrical device.

Figure 2. Conductive electrospun fibres of poly(3-hexylthiophène) (500 nm average diameter).

Why Intelligent Fibres?

The mission of the NRC-IMI Functional Polymer Systems group is to respond to the needs of Canadian industry and its desire to add functionalities in polymer materials. NRC-IMI can produce fibres measuring from a few nanometres to several microns in diameter.

Figure 3. Laboratory pilot line for heat stretching; it is possible to produce filaments having up to three layers of three different materials.

Equipment and Installations

Melt spinning/melt blowing pilot line

During heat stretching, the fibres are formed by mechanical stretching of extruded laments at different stages from a melt to the solid state. As for the heat blowing process, the fibres are stretched at the end of the procedure by blowing them with high speed air.

Melt spinning/melt blowing pilot line

Multilayer single fiber spinning

A variant of heat stretching, this procedure on a laboratory extrusion line permits the production of fibres by stretching made up of three layers of three different materials.

Electrospinning

This process, which permits the production of nanofibres from very small quantities of material (< 1 mg), consists of stretching a fibre from a polymer solution using an electric field. This process also permits the production of multilayer fibres (our installations allow up to three to be produced).

Collaborate with NRC-IMI

With its expertise and its state-of-the-art equipment, the NRC Industrial Materials Institute is ready to partner with you for a better understanding of these functional polymer-based technologies, for the production of intelligent fibres and to pursue the development of this science.

The R&D resources of NRC-IMI are accessible to companies as well as other research laboratories that wish to conduct collaborative projects with an integrated approach in order to benefit from technical support or to carry out feasibility studies in the development of a process.

Aerial view of the Industrial Materials Institute of the National Research Council of Canada

Lucie Robitaille, Ph.D. Group Leader Functional Polymer Systems Tel.: (450) 641-5032 Fax: (450) 641-5105 E-mail: Lucie.Robitaille@cnrc-nrc.gc.ca
Abdellah Ajji, M.Sc.A., Ph.D. Research Officer Functional Polymer Systems Tel.: (450) 641-5244 Fax: (450) 641-5105 E-mail: Abdellah.Ajji@cnrc-nrc.gc.ca

Related Information

Institutes:

• NRC Industrial Materials Institute