Low-voltage textile-based wearable heater systems fabricated by printing reactive silver inks

The usage areas of textile materials are expanding day by day and provide different comfort features to the user. In this study, it was focused on designing a fabric with heating feature. By the help of printing particle-free silver inks on textiles, a low-voltage and light-weight fabric heater was produced in wearable form using a low-cost fabrication process. To test the heating properties of the produced fabrics, a computer controlled electronic circuit was designed and implemented. The results proved that the heater designed in this work shows a very good heating performance with low voltage levels, after reaching 55 degrees C in a short time (<10 s). The heating and cooling patterns exhibit very similar behavior. Moreover, the fabrics with the conductive printed electrodes show durable and robust heating performance in different shapes and voltage levels. One of the most important advantages of this fabric heater is safety, based on the low voltage operation and faster cooling than heating. In addition, this fabric heater has the advantage of being able to be raised to high temperatures with low potential differences. (C) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.