Groundbreaking aluminum coating technology, which can reduce current price of wearable fiber by fiftieth, is developed. It is causing positive expectation around industries as it will be able to provide an opportunity for wearable device markets that now have competitive edge in price to be launched.

New Industry Creation Projection’s Material Research Institute Business Group has developed aluminum fiber material technology with high conductivity by using solution process. While gold or silver was used in the past as raw material and processing technology were not available for aluminum coating technology, now industries can use aluminum that is cost-friendly. Since price of wearable fiber can be greatly reduced If fine electronic device’s electrodes and circuits are manufactured by aluminum ink instead of gold or silver, it is expected that there will be significant amount of economic effects.

Aluminum has the fourth highest electricity conductivity and its price is also relatively inexpensive. However it was not used as raw material for wet process such as printing coating technology since it has high oxidation explosiveness. Expensive gold or silver was mostly used as members of framework of aluminum coating technology in the past.

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<AI Ink that was used for aluminum wet coating process. Conductive fiber and applied products that were made by using such process. >

This research institute once developed ink material using aluminum precursor, which is a previous step before aluminum was made in 2011. It put fiber material that went through catalytic treatment into aluminum ink, separated precursor, and created a nucleus. Based on this nucleus, films with high conductivity were made and they became material of aluminum fiber with high conductivity.

Conductive fiber technology can be divided into metallic fiber technology and metallic coating fiber and there were limitations to these. Although metallic fiber technology has good electricity conductivity by drawing metals thinly and making fibers like threads, there were problems where these fibers were easily snapped when they were broken or bent. While metallic coating fiber has good durability against external force, it had expensive cost for process such as vacuum deposition technology and was based on nickel that is harmful for human body. Nickel is a carcinogenic material.

Due to these limitations, there was a need to create conductive fiber material technology that is made up of non-harmful material and has high durability and electric characteristics.

It is estimated that global wearable device industry markets, which are based on conductive fiber material, will be worth about $1.2 billion in 2018. Wearable fiber can be used for functional military uniform that has functions like heating and cooling, cloth-type healthcare, wearable electronic device and others.

Staff Reporter Song, Hyeyoung | hybrid@etnews.com