Team: Acadia
Team Members: Jennifer McClurg,
Amit Sawhney
School: University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Ken Kahn, Assistant Professor, Department of Marketing, Logistics, and Transportation
Product or Service: A soft conductor, produced using silver nanoparticles, carbon nanotubes (CNT), and conducting polymers (CPs), called Smart-nanotex®. It is intended and positioned as a wearable fabric-based electronic network of nanostructures that monitor stress and strain from the skin. When fitted to an individual and connected to a computer, a stream of information about the actions of the human body are collected for the purposes of controlling and monitoring muscle activity.
Smart-nanotex® is a biocompatible woven fabric produced by inkjet, printing high conducting lines of CNTs/Silver connectors, and a nanoparticulate suspension of a more resistive polymer sensor. This way, the chemicals penetrate the textile’s fibers and protect against weather, dirt and washings. The connector carries the signal to an external detector that records the data. The assembly provides semi-quantitative information about bodily motion, a substantial improvement over current methods bodily evaluation, which typically involve tape measures and water replacement.
Human skin is the fundamental model for Smart-nanotex®, due to its high density of sensors, especially in areas such as the fingertips, which detect direction and magnitude of several components of the force tensor. Keeping human skin in mind, the Acadia team has developed printing methods that allow them to put patterns of multiple sensors onto fabrics. There are some competing technologies out there, most of which use screen printing or weave metallic yarns to form circuits. Acadia’s inkjet printing technology is a cost-effective technique that allows controlled integration of conducting inks.
Smart-nanotex® can be used to monitor ambulatory patients’ vital signs, and to gather information around joints to teach athletes and rehabilitation patients to move without straining delicate knees, elbows and ankles. Assisted living facilities and hospital will be able to take advantage of constant vitals monitoring of elderly residents and patients, physical therapists will see large gains in understanding patients’ progress and in helping better focus treatment, and athletic trainers will be able to assist athletes in refining their skills. All of this is possible due the feedback from Smart-nanotex®.
The Acadia team recently participated in the Nano I2P® Competition at Nano Nexus 2007, a nanotechnology conference hosted by Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, on April 3, 2007. The conference brought together universities, entrepreneurs, and leaders of the nanotechnology industry in an effort to move nanotechnology out of research organizations and into the marketplace.
”This competition gives us good ground to advance,” said Amit Sawhney, inventor of Smart-nanotex®, and an M.B.A. candidate at the University of Tennessee. “We’d like to be in the commercialization by the end of the year, and this is a good networking opportunity.”