posted on 2020-04-01, 12:39authored bySabyasachi Ghosh, B. Nitin, Sanjay Remanan, Yudhajit Bhattacharjee, Arup Ghorai, Tamal Dey, Tushar Kanti Das, Narayan Ch. Das
In
recent times e-textiles have emerged as wonder safeguards due to the
great potential background in space, military, healthcare, or portable
electronics. As a result, widespread research and development have
been done to make significant advancement in this field, but it still
remains a key challenge to use one single product with multifunctional
attributes with the past performance of key characteristics. In this
work, phase-separated PEDOT:PSS ornamented with reduced graphene oxide
(rGO) nanosheets, deposited on the newly fabricated ultralightweight,
superhydrophobic, and mechanically enriched merino wool/nylon (W–N)
composite textile followed by the dipping and drying strategy. The
open edges-layered structure of rGO helping uniform deposition of
PEDOTs clusters, which allows the formation of a stacked layer of
PEDOTs/rGO-PEDOTs/PEDOTs for robust three-dimensional electrical transforming
channel network within the W–N textile surface. These dip-coated
multifunctional textiles show high electrical conductivities up to
90.5 S cm–1 conjugated with a flexible electromagnetic
interference shielding efficiency of 73.8 dB (in X-band) and in-plane
thermal conductivity of 0.81 W/mK with a minimum thickness of 0.84
mm. This thin coating maintained the hydrophobicity (water contact
angle of ∼150°) leading to an excellent EM protective
cloth combined with real-life antenna performance under high mechanical
or chemical tolerance. Interestingly, this multiuse textile can also
act as an exceptional TASER Proof Textile (TPT) due to a short out
of the electrical shock coming from the TASER by its unique conducting
network architecture. Remarkably, this coated textile can get a response
by the soft touch to lighten up the household bulb and could establish
wireless communication via an HC-05 Bluetooth module as a textile-based
touch switch. This developed fabric could perform as a new potentially
scalable single product in intelligent smart garments, portable next-generation
electronics, and the growing threat of EM pollution.