ABSTRACT MUKAI, YUSUKE. Dielectric
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
ABSTRACT MUKAI, YUSUKE. Dielectric Properties of Cotton Fabrics and Their Applications. (Under the direction of Drs. Minyoung Suh and Stephen Michielsen). Uncovering relationships between the structural parameters and the dielectric properties of cotton fabrics brings two consequential benefits: development of a structural analysis method for cotton fabrics and establishment of a reference point to engineer the dielectric properties of cotton fabrics for development of high-performance textile-based electronics. In this context, the goal of this research was to explore the structure-dielectric property relationships in cotton fabrics in a wide range of frequencies and their applications in developing a wearable medical apparatus on a cotton fabric platform. In order to achieve this goal, three experiments were designed and conducted. In the first experiment (Experiment I), the dielectric properties of cotton fabrics were investigated in relation to the fabric construction (either plain-woven or plain-knit), thread count (picks per inch (PPI), ends per inch (EPI), courses per inch (CPI) and wales per inch (WPI)) and solid volume fraction (SVF) in a low-frequency domain (20 Hz – 1 MHz). By manipulating the relative humidity (RH), three major dielectric relaxations were identified in cotton fabrics and those were of electrode polarization, interfacial polarization, and dipolar polarization of bound water. Also, at an elevated RH, both electrode and interfacial polarizations were enhanced due to an increased ionic conductivity in absorbed free water. At 1 MHz, the real part of the relative permittivity of both woven and knitted cotton fabrics reasonably increased with thread count, and this was primarily elucidated with associated increase in the SVF as substantiated by the dielectric mixture theory. On the other hand, the imaginary part of the relative permittivity and loss tangent did not show clear monotonic trends to the thread count or SVF at higher RH levels, and this was interpreted that additional mixing factors such as the structure-dependent interfacial polarization and/or electrode polarization could also be influencing the dielectric properties of highly moist cotton fabrics. The effect of the fabric construction was investigated through the comparisons of the dielectric properties of woven and knitted fabrics of the same SVFs. It was revealed at 1 MHz that the fabric construction plays an important role in the dielectric properties – for all the comparisons of the same SVF, the knitted fabrics showed higher values of the complex relative permittivity and loss tangent than the woven fabrics. This observation was interpreted that although the current mainstream in the low-frequency dielectric investigations on textile fabrics deals primarily with the SVF and RH in literature, the fabric construction also needs to be treated as a key influencer. The second experiment (Experiment II) examined the effect of the fabric construction, thread count and SVF on the microwave dielectric properties of cotton fabrics. In this experiment, the cotton fabrics were adopted from Experiment I and the complex relative permittivity and loss tangent were characterized based on the microstrip line method in the frequency range of 100 MHz to 6 GHz under five different RH conditions. For a further analysis, the patch antenna method, which measures only the real part of the relative permittivity and only at a single frequency (~2.45 GHz) but in a greater resolution, was also incorporated. Both microstrip line and patch antenna measurements reasonably agreed that the real part of the relative permittivity tend to increase with RH at near 2.45 GHz. The imaginary part and loss tangent also exhibited tendencies to increase with RH from the microstrip line measurements at 2.45 GHz. These increases in the complex permittivity and loss tangent were most likely due to an increased free water content at a higher RH. The thread count was also found to increase the real part of the relative permittivity of both woven and knitted fabrics from both microstrip line and patch antenna measurements at near 2.45 GHz, and this was primarily due to an associated increase in the SVF as corroborated by the dielectric mixture theory. However, the imaginary part of the relative permittivity and loss tangent of woven and some knitted fabrics predominantly exhibited weak or no correlations to the thread count or SVFs, and this was most probably due to limited loss resolution of the microstrip line method. Under the controlled SVF and at near 2.45 GHz, the woven and knitted cotton fabrics did not exhibit a significant difference (probability (p)-value ≥ 0.19) in their complex permittivities and loss tangents from the microstrip line method due to limited resolution. However, the patch antenna method disclosed that the woven fabrics exhibit higher dielectric constants than the knitted fabrics (p-value, p < 0.01) under the controlled SVF, and it was interpreted that the patch antenna method provided a better resolution in spotting the differences in the dielectric properties of woven and knitted fabrics. By considering the yarn orientation within the fabrics, the dielectric mixture theory, and the anisotropic nature of cotton fibers, these dielectric constant differences between the woven and knitted constructions were successfully elucidated by the evidence that the woven samples had more fibers in the normal direction than the knitted samples of the same SVF. The third and last experiment (Experiment III) presents a cotton fabric antenna developed for wearable breast thermotherapy. A cotton fabric with the optimal dielectric properties was chosen based on the results from Experiment II and was incorporated as the substrate and padding layers of the antenna, and the electromagnetic (EM) and heating performance of the developed antenna were both theoretically and experimentally examined with a tissue-equivalent phantom in relation to the dielectric properties of the cotton fabric under three RH conditions. From EM simulations and measurements, the dielectric constant variation with RH had only a minor impact on the antenna impedance matching since the cotton fabric antenna had a wide impedance bandwidth. Thanks to this, the antenna sample demonstrated temperature rises of over 4.7 °C and 2.3 °C at the tissue depths of 5 mm and 15 mm after 900 seconds of heating, respectively. Also, a slightly better heating performance was obtained at a lower RH due to a lower dielectric loss in the cotton substrate and padding layers. These results provide an evidence that a satisfactory heating for a hyperthermia treatment is possible with the proposed textile antenna applicator. © Copyright 2019 by Yusuke Mukai All Rights Reserved Dielectric Properties of Cotton Fabrics and Their Applications by Yusuke Mukai A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty of North Carolina State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Fiber and Polymer Science Raleigh, North Carolina 2019 APPROVED BY: _______________________________ _______________________________ Dr. Jacob J. Adams Dr. Elizabeth C. Dickey _______________________________ _______________________________ Dr. Stephen Michielsen Dr. Minyoung Suh Co-Chair of Advisory Committee Co-Chair of Advisory Committee DEDICATION To Neta for her support ii BIOGRAPHY Yusuke Mukai was born in Osaka, Japan in February 1992. He received the Bachelor of Engineering degree in Chemistry from Shinshu University (Nagano, Japan) in March 2014, and the Master of Science degree in Textiles from North Carolina State University in May 2016. His recent academic awards include the Second-Place Award in the Graduate Student Paper Competition from the Fiber Society (2019) and the Provost’s Doctoral Fellowship Award from North Carolina State University (2016–2017). iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere appreciation to my advisers, Drs. Minyoung Suh and Stephen Michielsen, whose expertise, understanding, generous guidance and support made it possible to work on a topic of great interest to me. I would also like to extend my sincere appreciation to the members of advisory committee, Drs. Jacob J. Adams and Elizabeth C. Dickey, for their valuable advice and guidance to complete this work. My thankfulness also goes to Dr. Jon P. Rust and Mr. William M. Barefoot for funding me through teaching assistantship in the Springs Weaving Laboratory and the Textile Fundamentals eLearning project. I am also grateful to Drs. Jacob L. Jones and Ching-Chang Chung for giving us access to the LCR meter and micro-computed tomography (micro-CT). I am also thankful to Dr. Harvey A. West II for conditioning the samples in the environmental chamber. I would also like to thank Ms. Janie F. Woodbridge, Mr. Tri D. Vu, Mr. James B. Davis and Ms. Teresa J. White for their guidance during yarn preparation, fabric manufacturing and physical testing. My sincere appreciation also goes to Mr. Vivek T. Bharambe, Mr. Junyu Shen and Mr. Bill Zhou for their support during the microwave simulations and measurements. I am also grateful to all my friends who have supported and encouraged me to complete this work. Last but not least, I would like to offer special thanks to my family. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES ....................................................................................................................... viii LIST OF FIGURES .......................................................................................................................