A robust and washable electrically conductive cotton thread is being used by researchers at Imperial College London in the UK to embroider low-cost sensors on T-shirts and face masks. The thread, called PECOTEX, is produced by dyeing a pre-treated cotton thread with a low-cost poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) polystyrene sulfonate (PEDOT:PSS) ink. Using a simple, improvised roll-to-roll setup, the researchers are able to produce 100 m of the thread in six hours. A single metre of the thread costs US$0.15 to manufacture and is sufficient for the embroidery of more than ten sensors using standard computerised machines.
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