Dr Nazmul Karim
Associate Professor for Novel Print Process and Materials, The University of West of England, Bristol
Dr Nazmul Karim is an Associate Professor for Novel Print Process and Materials (Graphene and other 2D Materials) at the Centre for Fine Print Research, The University of West of England, Bristol (UK). With about 12 years of industry and academic experiences in graphene science and textile related technologies, and a passion for getting research out of the lab and into real world applications, He is currently leading a team of post-doctoral Research Fellows and PhD students to develop scalable and cost-effective next generation functional and wearable textiles. Prior to that, Dr Karim led graphene and other 2D materials-based printed and coated wearable electronic textiles research activities at the National Graphene Institute of University of Manchester with Nobel prize winning Professor Sir Kostya S Novoselov. His current research interest includes exfoliation and functionalisation of graphene and other 2D materials for flexible wearable applications, and manufacturing of such devices via highly scalable fabrication techniques (such as coating/printing). He is passionate about introducing smart intelligent materials and artificial intelligence (AI) to printed electronics for next generation healthcare applications. He also has an interest in graphene or nanomaterials enhanced environmentally sustainable and high performance recycle polymer composites (e.g rPET), natural and synthetic fibre composites, energy storage devices and smart composites for structural health monitoring.
Presentation Title:
- Multifunctional Graphene-based Wearable E-textiles
Presentation Summary:
- Wearable electronics is becoming increasingly very popular since such technology makes life safer, healthier and more comfortable. Among them, smart wearable textiles have been going through significant evolutions in recent years, through the innovation of wearable electronics, and due to their miniaturization and the wireless revolution. This has resulted in personalized wearable garments that can interface with the human body and continuously monitor, collect, and communicate various physiological parameters such as temperature, humidity, heart rate, and activity monitoring. Such a platform would potentially provide a solution to the overburdened healthcare system resulting from a rapidly growing aging society, as well as maintaining and encouraging healthy and independent living for all, irrelevant of time and location. However, current technologies for wearable garments are associated with a number of challenges that other electronic technologies do not face, such as the complex and time-consuming manufacturing process of e-textiles and the use of expensive, non-biodegradable, and unstable metallic conductive materials.Graphene-based textiles have shown promise for next generation wearable electronics applications due to its advantages over metal-based technology. We developed simple, scalable and cost-effective way of manufacturing graphene-based textiles at commercial production rates of ∼150 m/min for fabrics and (∼1000 kg/h) for electro-conductive textile yarns. The graphene textiles thus produced are washable, flexible and bendable. We then demonstrate a potential application of our graphene-based electronics textiles for multifunctional and high-performance wearable electronics applications. We believe our scalable production method of producing graphene-based wearable e-textiles is an important step toward moving from R&D-based e-textiles to actual real-world applications.
E-Textiles 2023 