All inkjet-printed graphene-based conductive patterns for wearable e-textile applications

By N. Karim, S. Afroj, Andromachi Malandraki, Sean Butterworth, Christopher Beach, M. Rigout, K. Novoselov, A. Casson, S. Yeates. 2017

196 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Inkjet printing of graphene inks is considered to be very promising for wearable e-textile applications as benefits of both inkjet printing and extra-ordinary electronic, optical and mechanical properties of graphene can be exploited. However, the common problem associated with inkjet printing of conductive inks on textiles is the difficulty to print a continuous conductive path on a rough and porous textile surface. Here we report inkjet printing of an organic nanoparticle based surface pre-treatment onto textiles to enable all inkjet-printed graphene e-textiles for the first time. The functionalized organic nanoparticles present a hydrophobic breathable coating on textiles. Subsequent inkjet printing of a continuous conductive electrical path onto the pre-treated coating reduced the sheet resistance of graphene-based printed e-textiles by three orders of magnitude from 1.09 × 106 Ω sq−1 to 2.14 × 103 Ω sq−1 compared with untreated textiles. We present several examples of how this finding opens up opportunities for real world applications of printed, low cost and environmentally friendly graphene wearable e-textiles.

Subfields: Biomedical Engineering, Organic Chemistry, Polymers and Plastics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ab29bf0dce60538426dcb4b929cfa72ba87c16d6