Processing and Properties of Multifunctional Metal Composite Yarns and Woven
Fabric
Zhi-Cai Yu1, Jian-Fei Zhang2, Ching-Wen Lou3, Hua-Ling He1, An-Pang Chen4, and
Jia-Horng Lin4,5,6*
1
Functional Textile Materials Laboratory of Eastern Liaoning University, School of
Chemical Engineering and Material Science, Eastern Liaoning University, Dandong
Liaoning 118003, China
2
School of Textiles, Tianjin Polytechnic University, Tianjin 300387, China
3
Institute of Biomedical Engineering and Materials Science, Central Taiwan
University of Science and Technology, Taichung 40601, Taiwan
*4Laboratory of Fiber Application and Manufacturing, Department of Fiber and
Composite Materials, Feng Chia University, Taichung 40724, Taiwan
*5School of Chinese Medicine, China Medical University, Taichung 40402, Taiwan
*6Department of Fashion Design, Asia University, Taichung 41354, Taiwan
*Corresponding author: Jia-Horng Lin, Ph.D.
E-mail: jhlin@fcu.edu.tw, jhlin@fcuoa.fcu.edu.tw
Abstract
Multifunctional metal composite yarns made of crisscross-section polyester (CSP),
antibacterial nylon (AN), and stainless steel wires (SSW) were manufactured using a
hollow spindle spinning machine. The core yarn, the inner wrapped yarn, and the
outer wrapped yarns were SSW, AN, and CSP, respectively. Process parameters such
as wrapping material content obviously influenced the tenacity, elongation, and
surface morphology properties of the manufactured multifunctional metal composite
yarns. These yarns were then woven into fabrics using a rapier loom. Woven fabric
WC-8 was evaluated in terms of its mechanical properties, antibacterial activity, and
electromagnetic shielding effectiveness (EMSE). Results showed that the use of SSW
and AN in the metal composite yarns improved the antibacterial and EMSE of the
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woven fabric. Thus, these metal composite woven fabrics can be used in
manufacturing personal protective clothing to protect humans from electromagnetic
radiation and bacterial cross-infection.
Keywords: Woven; Tensile; Strength; Stainless; Properties; Processes; Polyester;
Manufacturing.
Introduction
Metal composite fabrics are textiles that have unobtrusively built-in electronic and
photonic functions [1-3]. Recently, metal composite yarns and fabrics have been
widely used in manufacturing smart and other personal protective clothing because of
their properties such as flexibility, thermal expansion matching, and lightweight.
Metal composite textiles are generally manufactured through the following methods:
(1) lamination of conductive layers onto the surface of textiles, conductive coating
and ionic plating [4-5]; (2) incorporation of metal composite yarns, fibers or fillers
into non-conductive textiles [6]. The use of metal composite yarns in manufacturing
metal composite fabrics will provide better wear and scratch resistance properties than
the traditional lamination techniques [7-9].
Several types of metal composite yarns have been recently manufactured, and woven
into textiles. Bedeloglu et al. [10] manufactured a type of polyacrylic/metal wire
composite yarns using core spinning and wrap spinning techniques through a fancy
yarn machine. For manufacturing metal composite yarns, the core yarn and wrapped
yarn was stainless steel wire (SSW) and polyacrylic filament, respectively. Moreover,
in another study, Bedeloglu et al. [11] also produced a type of cotton/ metal wire
core-sheath conductive yarn that comprised copper or SSW and cotton fibers as its the
core and sheath material, respectively. These yarns were manufactured using a ring
spinning system. Schwarz et al. [12] further investigated the electrical properties of
the elastic composite yarns after cyclic straining and washing. The bamboo charcoal
polyester/stainless steel complex core-sheath yarns and their knitted fabrics were also
produced as healthcare textiles by Lin et al. [13-14].
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The widespread uses of electronic devices in communication and biomedicine have
increased the chance of humans to be exposed to electromagnetic (EM) waves.
Growing scientific evidence that links the exposure to EM waves with a range of
negative effects on our health such as brain tumors, sleep, and depression problems
exists [15]. Recently, metal composite fabrics that contain SSW have been widely
used as EM shielding materials because of their flexibility and lightweight. Despite
the many kinds of metal composite yarns that have been manufactured, these hybrid
yarns only exhibit conductive property, but they lack antibacterial property. The EM
shielding fabric should also have a certain degree of antibacterial property because
they are used in hospitals and in other working environments that have unhealthy
indoor air quality.
Therefore, this study aimed to manufacture a type of novel multifunctional
crisscross-section polyester (CSP)/antibacterial nylon (AN)/stainless steel wire (SSW)
metal composite yarns that exhibit both EM shielding and antibacterial properties.
These yarns were manufactured through a hollow spindle spinning system using SSW,
AN, and CSP as the core yarn, the inner-wrapped yarn, and the outer-wrapped yarn,
respectively. The hollow spindle spinning technology has certain advantages over
conventional ring spinning, such as fuller utilization of fiber strength in composite
yarns, lower internal stress, less hairiness, and higher production efficiency. These
manufactured metal composite yarns were then woven into fabrics as weft yarns
through a rapier loom. The effects of the composite yarns’ wrapping material content
on the tenacity and elongation of the metal composite yarns, and as well as the
antibacterial and EM shielding properties of the manufactured woven fabric, were
explored in the present study. These multifunctional metal composite yarns and
fabrics can be used in manufacturing protective clothing that provides defense against
EM radiation and bacterial cross-infection. After the literature survey, these
CSP/AN/SSW metal composite yarns and their woven fabrics are novel and have not
been addressed in any other research papers.
Experimental
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Materials
Two types of functional yarns, namely, AN and CSP yarn were used in the present
study. The 150d/144f AN yarn (Industrial Technology Research Institute, Taiwan) had
been finished using organosilicon quaternary ammonium. The 75d/48f CSP yarns
(Everest Textile Co., Ltd., Taiwan) had longitudinal grooves on the fiber surface that
were beneficial in absorbing and transporting sweat from the skin to the surface of the
fabric. The SSW (King’s Metal Fiber Technology Co., Ltd., Taiwan) that was used
had a diameter of 0.05 mm (grade 316L). All other yarn properties are listed in Table
1.
Sample preparation
A hollow spindle spinning machine (CR20, Taiwan) was used to produce metal
composite yarns. Figure 1 shows the configurations and working principle of both the
hollow spindle spinning and weaving machines. The hollow spindle spinning machine
mainly consisted of an input device, double-flanged packages, and output and
winding rollers. The SSW core yarn was fed using the input device A. The AN and
CSP yarns were preset on double-flanged packages F and G, respectively. The SSW
was covered using AN and CSP in the Z- and S-directions when the hollow spindles D
and E were rotated clockwise and counter-clockwise, respectively. Figure 1(b) shows
the schematic of the metal composite yarns. The double-flanged packages were
rotated at a constant speed of 8000 rpm. The relationship of the wrapped amount of
metal composite yarns per centimeter and the speed of hollow spindles were
determined using this formula:
T1 =
R
T×D×π
(1)
where T is the speed of the output roller (rpm); R is the speed of the hollow spindle
(rpm); 𝑇1 is the wrapped amounts of the metal composite yarns (turns/cm), and D is
the diameter of the output roller (6.5 cm).
M yarn guide was used to ensure the uniform wrapping of CSP around the AN yarns.
It was also used to control the output path, and to increase the tension of the CSP yarn.
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The value of the used tension was 2.5 gf, which was tested through SHIMPO
(DTM-1K). The rest of the yarn manufacturing parameters are presented in Table 2.
An automatic rapier loom (SL7900, Taiwan) was used to prepare the woven fabric
using the metal composite yarns that were produced as weft yarns. The metal
composite yarns are stiffer than common yarns. The use of the rapier loom, as
compared with knitting machine, causes a lower degree of bending of the metal
composite yarns. Manufacturing woven fabrics using the metal composite yarn is
observed to be much easier than the stainless steel wire alone. Figure 1(c) displays the
schematic of the basic manufacturing principle of the rapier machine. Warp threads
(1000 D polyester yarns) were placed on the warp beam and threaded through the
rapier loom. The weft threads (metal composite yarns) were incorporated into the
warp threads and aligned with a reed, when the warp threads were vertically moved
by the shafts [17-18]. Therefore, a weaving pattern was formed. Each type of metal
composite yarns was used in the weaving machine as weft yarns in the process of
manufacturing. Finally, six types of woven fabrics, namely, WC-6.5, WC-8, WC-9.5,
WC-11, WC-12.5, and WC-14.0, were successfully produced using the rapier
machine. The speed of picking motion was 200 rpm; and the produced woven fabrics
had a thread count of 34 ends/inch × 20 picks/inch. These manufactured metal
composite woven fabrics were in 1/1 plain construction, as shown in Figure 2.
Property test
The breaking force and elongation of the fabricated yarns were determined through an
automatic yarn tester (STATIMAT M, German). The tenacity values of the composite
yarns were equivalent to the breaking strength divided by the linear density of the
yarn in cN/tex [19]. A vector network analyzer (R3132A, Advantest) with a coaxial
transmission holder was used to assess the EMSE of the woven fabrics. Two test
strains, Escherichia coli (E. coli) and Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) were used to
assess the antibacterial property of the woven fabrics by observing their inhibition
zone, in accordance with AATCC90-2011.
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Results and Discussion
Observation of metal composite yarns
Figure 3 shows the images of the manufactured metal composite yarns. Using a yarn
guide, as shown in the pictures, would produce a more uniformly wrapped yarn. All
metal composite yarns, during production, were uniformly covered with CSP except
for HW-9.5 (G), which had no yarn guide. An exposed AN yarn was very important in
obtaining a higher antibacterial activity and drying rate. If the AN yarn was uniformly
bared, the water absorbed by this yarn evaporated faster than that in the AN yarns that
were completely covered with CSP. The bared AN yarn was also beneficial in
inhibiting bacterial reproduction on the surface of the metal composite yarn. Thus, the
yarn guide was vital in producing multifunctional metal composite yarns.
Effect of wrapping amount on the tenacity and CV values of the composite yarns
Figure 4 shows the tenacity and CV values of the produced metal composite yarns.
The tenacity of the produced metal composite yarns gradually decreased when the
wrapped amount exceeded 8.0 turns/cm. This finding was attributed to the excess
wrapping amount that resulted in decreased wrapping angles, which subsequently
decreased the axial tenacities of the metal composite yarns. However, when the
wrapped amount was lower than 8.0 turns/cm, the large wrapping angles decreased
the cohesion of the manufactured composite yarns. The optimum tenacity of the metal
composite yarn was obtained only when the wrapping amount was 8 turns/cm.
Nonetheless, all tenacity results differed by less than 5cN/text because both the
breaking strength and the elongation of CSP yarn was lower than those of the AN
yarn. Hence, CSP was damaged first when the metal composite yarns were subjected
to an external force; whereas, AN remained complete (Figure 5). Therefore, the
property of CSP was the main factor that affected the tenacity of the manufactured
metal composite yarns. According to Figure 4(b), the CV values of all the produced
metal composite yarns were less than 0.07, which suggests that all the tenacity of the
metal composite yarns were stable and thus met the requirements of the actual
production.
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Effect of wrapping amount on the elongation and CV values of metal composite yarns
Figure 6 shows the elongation and CV values of the produced metal composite yarns.
The elongation was found to be increased with the increase of wrapping amount. This
was due to the high amount of wrapping that increased the slippage property of the
wrapped materials around the SSW. However, the CV values slightly increased with
increased amount of wrapping of composite yarns. The fact that a high wrapping
amount increased the slippage property of the wrapped materials around the SSW
may explain this phenomenon. When the metal composite yarns were stretched by an
external force, the wrapped materials could not uniformly share the outside force
during sliding. Consequently, the unstable breaking point increased the CV values. In
this study, all CV values were less than 0.1 when the wrapped amounts were varied
from 6.5 to 14 turns/cm. Thus, breaking elongation was stable.
Effect of wrapping amount on the tensile strength of woven fabric
Figure 7 shows the tensile strengths of the manufactured woven fabrics. Fabric
WC-8.0 had the highest tensile strength, whereas WC-14.0 displayed the lowest. The
tensile strengths of the woven fabrics linearly decreased when the wrapped amount of
weft composite yarn was more than 8.0 turns/cm. The variation trend of the tensile
strengths of the fabrics along the weft direction was similar to that of the produced
metal composite yarns, as shown in Figure 4. Hence, the tensile strengths of the
woven fabrics were related to the tenacity of the manufactured metal composite yarns.
A regression equation was used to determine the relationship of the tensile strength of
woven fabric and the wrapping amount (8-14 turns/cm) of weft metal composite yarns
along the weft direction, as shown in Figure 7(b). The tensile strength decreased with
increased wrapping amount of the metal composite in the weft direction, as expressed
by this equation:
Y = −22X+ 642
(2)
where Y is tensile strength in the weft direction (N) and X is the wrapping amount of
the metal composite yarns in the weft direction.
The correlation coefficient of the fitting line (R2) is 0.953, which indicates a strong
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correlation between the wrapped amounts of produced metal composite yarns and the
tensile strengths of the woven fabrics along the weft direction.
Antibacterial activity and EMSE evaluation
WC-8 was chosen as a representative for assessing antibacterial activity and EM
shielding ability which was based on the tensile strength results of the manufactured
woven fabric. Figure 8(a) shows that the metal composite fabric WC-8 displayed
better EMSE than the woven fabric made from PET. This finding was due to the
presence of SSW in the woven fabric that caused the effective absorption and
reflection of the EM wave. The EMSE of this single layer woven fabric would
provide at least -10 dB reductions across a wide range of low-frequencies. An obvious
inhibition zone was also observed among the plates after 24 h of incubation with E.
coli and S. aureus, as shown in Figure 8(b). Thus, the manufactured woven fabric had
satisfactory antibacterial properties against both E. coli and S. aureus because of the
presence of the AN yarn in the manufactured metal composite yarns.
Conclusions
In this study, we described the processing parameters of the multifunctional
CSP/AN/SSW metal composite yarns and their woven fabric made using hollow
spindle machine and rapier loom machine, respectively. Moreover, we also tested the
mechanical and functional properties of both the produced metal composite yarns and
woven fabrics. The following conclusions have been drawn:
1. The yarn guide fixed the output line of the CSP yarn and generated a certain tension
in the wrapped CSP yarn, which resulted in uniform CSP coverage on the AN
yarns. Bare AN yarns improved the drying rate and antibacterial properties of the
produced metal composite yarns.
2. Tenacity and elongation results of the metal composite yarns indicated that C-8.0
had the highest tenacity, whereas C-6.8 had the highest elongation and CV values.
3. When the metal composite yarns were subjected to external force, the CSP was first
damaged; whereas the AN remained complete.
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4. A correlation existed between the tensile strengths of the woven fabrics and the
weft direction of the metal composite yarn. The manufactured metal composite
woven fabrics exhibited satisfactory EMSE and antibacterial activity.
These manufactured multifunctional composite yarns and woven fabrics can be used
in protective clothing to safeguard humans from EM radiation and bacterial
cross-infection in hospitals and similar areas. However, the yarns and woven fabrics
that were produced did not possess high elasticity. Therefore, personal protective
clothing made from these materials cannot be used in sports activities.
Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to the Laboratory of Fiber Application and Manufacturing,
Feng Chia University, for providing research materials, laboratory equipment and
financial support (NSC-103-2221-E-035-028). This work was also supported by the
Chinese Nature Science Foundation (No. 51343002), Key Discipline Project of
Liaoning Province Universities (No. 2012310), and Project of Functional Textile
Materials Laboratory of Eastern Liaoning University.
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