A Study on the E-textiles Dip-Coated with Electrically Conductive Hybrid Nano-Structures

Currently, e-textile market is rapidly expanding and the emerging area of e-textiles requires electrically conductive threads for diverse applications, including wearable innovative e-textiles that can transmit/receive and display data with a variety of functions. This study introduces hybrid nano-structures which may help increase the conductivity of the textile threads for use in wearable and flexible smart apparels. For this aim, Ag was selected as a conductive material, and yarn treatment was implemented where silver nanowire (AgNW) and graphene flake (GF) hybrid structures overcome the limitations of the AgNW alone. The yarn treatment includes several treatment conditions, e.g., annealing temperature, annealing time, binder material such as polyurethane (PU), coating time, in order to search for the optimum method to form stable conductive nano-scale composite materials as thin film on the surface of textile yarns. Treatedyarns showed improved electrical resistance readings. The functionality of the spandex yarn as a stretchable conductive thread was also demonstrated. When the yarn specimens were treated with colloid of AgNW/GF, relatively good electrical conductivity value was obtained. During the extension and recovery cycles of the treated yarns, the initial resistance values did not deteriorate significantly, since the network of nanowire structure with the support of GF and polyurethane stayed flexible and stable. Through this research, it was found that when one-dimensional structure of AgNW and two-dimensional structure of GF were mixed as colloids and treated on the surface of textile yarns, flexible and stretchable electrical conductor could be formed.