TY - JOUR
T1 - Metal nanowires grown in situ on polymeric fibres for electronic textiles
AU - Halder, Oindrila
AU - Layani-Tzadka, Muriel E.
AU - Ziv Sharabani, Shiran
AU - Markovich, Gil
AU - Sitt, Amit
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© The Royal Society of Chemistry.
PY - 2022/3/7
Y1 - 2022/3/7
N2 - A key aspect of the use of conventional fabrics as smart textiles and wearable electronics is to incorporate a means of electrical conductivity into single polymer fibres. We present the transformation of thin polymer fibres and fabrics into conductive materials by in situ growth of a thin, optically transparent gold-silver nanowire (NW) mesh with a relatively low metal loading directly on the surface of polymer fibres. Demonstrating the method on poly(lactic-co-glycolic) acid and nylon microfibres, we show that the NW network morphology depends on the diameter of the polymer fibres, where at small diameters (1-2 μm), the NWs form a randomly oriented network, but for diameters above several micrometers, the NWs wrap around the fibres transversally. This phenomenon is associated with the stiffness of the surfactant templates used for the NW formation. The NW-decorated fibres exhibit a significant increase in conductivity. Moreover, single fibres can be stretched up to ∼15% before losing the electrical conductivity, while non-woven meshes could be stretched by about 25% before losing the conductivity. We believe that the approach demonstrated here can be extended to other polymeric fibres and that these flexible and transparent metal-coated polymer fibres could be useful for various smart electronic textile applications.
AB - A key aspect of the use of conventional fabrics as smart textiles and wearable electronics is to incorporate a means of electrical conductivity into single polymer fibres. We present the transformation of thin polymer fibres and fabrics into conductive materials by in situ growth of a thin, optically transparent gold-silver nanowire (NW) mesh with a relatively low metal loading directly on the surface of polymer fibres. Demonstrating the method on poly(lactic-co-glycolic) acid and nylon microfibres, we show that the NW network morphology depends on the diameter of the polymer fibres, where at small diameters (1-2 μm), the NWs form a randomly oriented network, but for diameters above several micrometers, the NWs wrap around the fibres transversally. This phenomenon is associated with the stiffness of the surfactant templates used for the NW formation. The NW-decorated fibres exhibit a significant increase in conductivity. Moreover, single fibres can be stretched up to ∼15% before losing the electrical conductivity, while non-woven meshes could be stretched by about 25% before losing the conductivity. We believe that the approach demonstrated here can be extended to other polymeric fibres and that these flexible and transparent metal-coated polymer fibres could be useful for various smart electronic textile applications.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85125757422&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1039/d1na00872b
DO - 10.1039/d1na00872b
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C2 - 36133692
AN - SCOPUS:85125757422
SN - 2516-0230
VL - 4
SP - 1368
EP - 1374
JO - Nanoscale Advances
JF - Nanoscale Advances
IS - 5
ER -