Impact of Conductive Yarns on an Embroidery Textile Moisture Sensor †

In this work, two embroidered textile moisture sensors are characterized with three different conductive yarns. The sensors are based on a capacitive interdigitated structure embroidered on a cotton substrate with an embroidered conductor yarn. The performance comparison of three different type of conductive yarns has been addressed. In order to evaluate the sensor sensitivity, the impedance of the sensor has been measured by means of an LCR meter from 20 Hz to 20 kHz on a climatic chamber with a sweep of the relative humidity from 30% to 65% at 20 °C. The experimental results show a clear and controllable dependence of the sensor impedance with the relative humidity and the chosen conductor yarns. This dependence points out the optimum conductive yarn to be used to develop wearable applications for moisture measurement.