Silver News

Silver-Imbedded Fabrics Are Giving Hope To North Carolina’s Threadbare Textile Industry

Faced with cheaper imports, North Carolina’s textile industry is turning to high tech clothing to help revive itself. At North Carolina State University in Raleigh, researchers are developing T-shirts with tiny silver particles containing nano-sized transmitters that are screen-printed onto the shirts. The ‘e-textile’ shirt can monitor the wearer’s vital signs such as respiration and temperature and send the information to a nearby receiver. Although many wrinkles need to be ironed out, such as finding small but powerful batteries to go with the shirt, the project has garnered attention from the military and major clothing manufacturers.

Much is riding on getting results. Since 1991, the state has lost nearly two-thirds of its textile jobs, about 173,000 workers.

Funding for the “Applications of Micromachines in Fabric Formation” program came from a $162,483 grant from The National Textile Council.

Silver News - Third Quarter 2005