Abstract:

After pretreated by atmospheric pressure plasma, ultra high molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) filament yarn was used as substrate to fabricate the conductive UHMWPE/PANI composite yarn continuously, using a novel method based on in-situ polymerization in this paper. A cylindrical plain weft knitted fabric was fabricated using the conductive UHMWPE/PANI composite yarn, and its strain-resistance performance was studied. The results indicated that the resistance of the sensing fabric increased firstly with increasing the strain and then decreased. The sensing fabric showed great sensitivity and the gauge factor was more than 30 when the strain was less than 20%. The repeatability of sensing fabric enhanced with the stretching time and it showed good repeatability after repeated stretching for 3 times.

Key words: ultrahigh molecular weight polyethylene, polyaniline, conductive cimposite yarn, in-situ polymerization, knitted fabric, strain sensing