Cellulosic Smart Textile Fibers based on Organic Electronics

• The paradigm shift of merging structural properties of materials with other functionalities prevails and cellulose based fibres are no exception. For the realisation of so called smart materials, including smart textiles, electrical conductivity is of special importance, enabling sensorics, signal transmission, energy supply, energy generation, and actuation. We here discuss taking use of the advancement within the organic electronics community of conjugated polymeric systems producing smart textile fibres for inclusion into garment as well as interior and technical textiles. Specifically, poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) known as PEDOT is studied as a model system. PEDOT has relevance being a working horse within the organic electronics community. Our emerging pilot line is based on creating conductivity by vapour polymerization of EDOT monomers on an oxidant coated textile fibre where these could be taken from arrange of materials. Here we focus on cellulose based fibres. It is shown that Tencell-Lyocell is a suitable substrate offering many  anchoring sites and that multiple depositions with layers deposited directly on each other decreased the resistance from 5.1 (± 1.6) kΩ/10 cm to 1.0 (± 0.1) kΩ/10 cm, for one layer and multiple layers respectively. Furthermore, adding 15 wt. % of the copolymer PEG-PPG-PEG to the oxidant solution decreased the resistance from 6.8 (± 1.2) kΩ/10 cm to 3.9 (± 0.8) kΩ/10 cm.

Keyword

Cellulose

smart textiles

conductive fibers

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Publication and Content Type

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kon (subject category)

kfu (subject category)