2022 IEEE International Conference on Nanoelectronics, Nanophotonics, Nanomaterials, Nanobioscience & Nanotechnology (5NANO) | 978-1-6654-3728-8/22/$31.
00 ©2022 IEEE | DOI: 10.1109/5NANO53044.2022.9828925
Curing Free, Silver Nano Ink Based Inkjet Printed
Fabrics for Bio-Medical Applications
Subitha D, Member IEEE
Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering
Vel Tech Rangarajan Dr. Sagunthala R&D Institute of Science and
Technology
Chennai, India
subithaece@veltech.edu.in
Velmurugan S
Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering
Vel Tech Rangarajan Dr. Sagunthala R&D Institute of Science
and Technology,
Chennai, India
velmuruganksrce@gmail.com
Abstract— Inkjet printing plays a vital role in the fabrication
of medical cloths that are worn by the patients comfortably. For
the acquisition of bio-signals out of the body and to extract the
parameters such as temperature, pressure, ECG signals etc
conductive electrodes or sensors are used. Hence, conductive
patterns or layers are needed to be placed over the body for
effective acquisition of bio-signals. Recent wearable medical
devices have these sensors as conductive patterns which are
integrated with the textile or dress material that the patient wear.
There are several methods available for the fabrication of such e-
textile materials. One such method is the inkjet printing that
overcomes the drawbacks of other traditional methods like dip
coating, screen printing, knitting and weaving. In this work, we
have fabricated an e-textile cloth by means of inkjet printing
using nano silver ink and have proven the conductivity of the
printed fabric by means of simple circuitry. This work also shows
the comparison of fabrication methods of conductive fabrics and
the materials used for the fabrication process.
Keywords— Silver Nano Ink; Fabric Sensor; Bio-medical;
CNT.
I. INTRODUCTION
The e-health industry is growing day by day and the
growth in the supporting systems for the acquisition of bio
signals is also equally important. This ensures the need for the
development of sensors in various forms. The traditional
sensors are mostly available in the form rigid materials and
not convenient to be placed on wearable materials. Now a day,
for the development of e-textile applications various forms of
flexible sensors are discussed in the recent literatures and the
development in the fabrication of these sensors are
tremendous. This body sensors are fabricated using the
flexible substrates such as textiles, Thermoplastic Elastomers,
PET substrates etc. While considering real time applications
for the diverse biometric monitoring and motion tracking, such
as bending, stretching, twisting and compressing, the need of
flexible sensors with high sensitivity is required. Many
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Rahul S G, Member IEEE
Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering
Vel Tech Rangarajan Dr. Sagunthala R&D Institute of Science and
Technology,
Chennai, India
rraghulgopi@gmail.com
Salveru Saiteja, Member IEEE
Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering
Vel Tech Rangarajan Dr. Sagunthala R&D Institute of Science and
Technology,
Chennai, India
vtu15318@veltech.edu.in
wearable devices are currently available in market. Smart
watch is one such device that monitors the heart rate and arm
bands that display the gesture control [4-5], smart contact
lenses for minimizing eye irritation [6] and implanted
wearable devices are the various developments in the field of
wearable sensors. The antennas are also playing major role in
the wearable sensor technology. Antennas that operate at a
particular resonant frequency helps in identifying the change
in the parameters present in the body fluids since their
composition have a definite resonant frequency and the
change in the parameter is indicated by the shift in resonant
frequency. These are the passive devices that work without
any battery backup and hence used in many applications [7-9].
Resonator type pressure sensors are designed in [10] by means
split ring resonator based meta-material structures and this is
used for variety of sensors in different formats.
Hence, in this paper a detailed comparison of various
fabrication methods and materials used for fabrication is
discussed in section I. Finally, a textile cloth is printed using a
nano ink and it was proven that it is curing free. With the help
of a simple LED circuitry its conductivity is also tested.
II. REVIEW ON WEARBLE TEXTILE FABRICATION
The applications of wearable devices for the monitoring of
bio signals from the body are needed to be done at minimal
testing time, high accuracy, non-invasively and with high
sensitivity. All the above are expected to be delivered by the
medical devices that are fabricated possibly at low cost in a
ready to handle set-up. The fig 1, shows some of the most
commonly used medical devices in wearable form. The
wearable technology supports the clinicians and care takers to
have a continuous access to physiological state of human
beings.
 remarks recognition.[19] Therefore wearable fabric systems
brings a successful service for continuous health monitoring
which provides an active, affordable and personalized health
care to the general populations, clinicians, and elderly
peoples[20].
Many researches are investigating the measurement of
human activities and motions with help of cameras and
accelerometers in earlier days, now the technology shows the
vision and development of fibers, yarns and polymers which
are integrated with electronic sensing technology which acts
as an artificial skin [21]. Recent soft sensor applications have
been focused on multidimensional aspects of human health
care and lifestyle interfacing with surrounding environment.
The Table.1. lists out the various fabrication methods and
materials used in various literatures of conductive fibers in
bio-medical applications. The below topics are the works of
different parameter acquisition such as ECG, Respiration,
strain sensors and pressure sensors.
Fig. 1. Wearable Devices

Arrival of smart fabric sensors based on integrated textile

electronic sensors have been developed and implemented in
many automatic physiological, user centered environmental

TABLE 1. DESIGN PARAMETERS OF THE SQUARE PATCH ANTENNA

Parameter Fabrication
Materials used Advantages Disadvantages References
measured method used
Dry Ag, dry electrodes without any skin Bar coating requires high quantity
ECG Bar-coating [11]
MWCNT/PDMS preparation and the use of wet gel of ink
Reduced Graphine Oxide Method of preparation of rGO is a
ECG Ink jet printing breathable, Eco-friendly [12]
(rGO) hard process
Viscosity and surface tension need
Compatibility with all surfaces
ECG Ink jet printing Reactive Silver Ink to selected for avoiding the ink [13]
since no pre-processing needed
spreading at the edges
Strain Carbon black anno bead- Screen printing makes impression
Screen printing Wet resistive [14]
sensors blended composite ink on the printing material
Strain Multi-Walled Carbon
Screen printing Direct deposition Complex process [15]
sensors Nanotubes/ silver

Single-wall nanotubes
(SWNTs) or multiwall Inkjet printing is less complex
Gas Sensors Inkjet Printing better control and resolution needed [16]
nanotubes (MWNTs) and higher throughput
nano materials
DNA Reduced Graphene efficient, and environmentally
dip-coating requires high quantity of ink [17]
detection Oxide (rGO) and CNTs friendly, good reproducibility
Electronic
3 D Printing Graphene Nanostructure High sensitivity Complex [18]
Skin

1) ECG and Respiration
A new method of studying the characteristics of
cardio respiratory signals by monitoring the heart rate by
embedding the piezo film yarn sensor integrated knitted fabric
(PYSF) is implemented in [22]. Here the piezo film is used to
observe the charge leakages due to dielectric behavior of
capacitive sensor. The voltage production occurs in PSYF by
applying stress in PVDF strips. Due to this vibration caused by
stress will produce some impact on frequency change with
some natural noise. The noise can be filtered using FFT and
digital filtering technique IRR bandpass to get useful
component of heart beat signals out of raw data. The PYS
fabric can able to measure respiratory rate and heart beat rate
under static and dynamic position. The integration of PVDF
into fabric results in slight decrease in signal amplitudes
compared to piezo film strips. This shows a successful
measurement of bio signals by knitted sensors.
A band type sensor was proposed for monitoring
respiration rate using Indium-tin Oxide (ITO) with cross
linked polyvinyl alcohol (C-PVA) coated conductive fabric in
[23]. It was attached with elastic belt worn by adult over the
circumference of chest of 95cm and change in resistance is
measured by lengthened during respiration. Impedance
spectrum analyser was used to measure the resistance
variation of the fabric at frequency of 3.5 breaths for 10sec. So
this combined ITO and C-PVA coating fabric will have a high
potential for use in respiration monitoring sensors in clinical
application.
2) Strain sensors

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 A fabric stretch sensor was designed embedded with this is the must better choice for the printing of conductive
PET/SP fibers for monitoring muscle activity in a human body inks for fabrics.
by monitoring muscle activity of human body by motion
recognition in [24]. It was designed by integrating strain
sensor into the muscle pant to detect the muscle activity. In
this the conductivity of initial resistance of fabric strain sensor
is measured easily (5k ohm).
A new mechanomyography sensor was designed in
Carbon nanotube (CNT) coated thread for classifying the
activity of muscles during sit to stand movements of human
limbs [25]. This CNT coating in thread will change its
electronic conductivity parameters and its mechanical
properties and act as strain sensor. This strain gauge is
integrated into fabrics which is suitable for wearable sensor
platform to analyse the mechanical activity of human limbs
with highest sensitivity [25].
3) Pressure Sensors
In [26], the high performance wearable pressure
Fig.2. Cotton fabric insulated with kapton tape
sensors are designed with finger print like 3D printed graphine
films grown using chemical vapour deposition (CVD). The
designed pressure sensor show high sensitivity, fast response,
high durability with a detection limit as low as 0.2pa. This
wearable sensor has high performance detecting applications
of thin objects, stubble physiological signals of human body
and sounds.

III. INKJET PRINTING ON TEXTILE USING NANO SILVER INK

The fabrication of wearable cloth for the measurement of

bio potentials, body temperature and external pressure applied
on body, internal mechanical movements of heart valves and
respiratory cycles etc are developed using different fabrication
methods such as weaving, knitting, screen printing and inkjet
printing of conductive layers over the textile / other flexible
substrates are discussed in the recent literatures [11-26]. The
Table 1 has presented various sensors fabricated using various Fig.3. Cotton fabric printed using nano-silver ink
methods specified above using different conductive layers.
But, in most of the papers, the conductive layer or strip is
developed on the top of the flexible substrate using nano ink.
Mostly, the nano conductive ink is synthesized using the nano
metallic particle dissolved in water or PDMS solution. In
some literatures nano composite ink is used which is
synthesized from graphene, Carbon Nano Tube (CNT) or
reduced grapheme oxide (rGO). But, the commonly used
metallic ink having higher conductivity is the silver ink. But,
the recent literatures used nono metallic or nano composite
metal inks that offers number of advantages over bulk ink
[27]. Inkjet printing is the printing technique that stands better
than the other fabrication techniques in terms of low ink
quantity and localized ink ejection. Initially, the cotton fabric
is insulated using kapton tape for masking as shown in Fig.2.
Then, the nano conductive silver ink [28] is printed on the
cotton textile as shown in Fig.3. The conductivity of the
conductive trace is tested using the circuitry as shown in Fig.4.
Moreover, the ink used in this work does not demand for
additional curing such as UV and Oven heating. In this way,
Fig.4. Circuitry using printed fabric as conductor

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 IV. CONCLUSION
In this paper, a detailed comparison of various fabrication
methods and conductive materials used for the fabrication of
wearable cloth for bio medical applications is discussed. Then,
a sample cloth is also printed using curing free, instant curable
nano silver ink and its conductivity is also shown. This work
is done as an initial step into the fabrication of wearable cloth
using printable nano inks.
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