Development of conductive cotton fabrics for heating devices

Abstract

Recent developments in the area of textiles to make fabrics more functional have led to synthesizing “intelligent fabrics.” This can be achieved by making the fabrics electrically conducting. In the present study it is reported that the cotton fabrics, when impregnated with polypyrrole, achieve enhanced level of conduction. The method of diffusion of pyrrole, followed by polymerization using iron chloride as oxidant, was used. The different levels of conduction were achieved by varying the contents of monomer in the bath from 0.01 to 0.1M during the synthesis. The conductivity could be enhanced from the initial value of 10−12 to 101 S/cm. It is shown that when a fixed voltage is applied to such a modified piece of cloth, the heat generated is up to 1000 W/m2 depending on the percentage of pyrrole present. Such fabrics can be used as heating pads and integrated into the apparel to keep the wearer warm enough using a portable 9.0‐V battery. Being flexible and breathable, such fabrics have better comfort properties (compared with conventional heating pads). It can find applications in dresses for army personnel and old‐age patients. Such conductive fabrics can also find applications in many areas such as electromagnetic interference shielding, gas sensors, and temperature indicators. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 102: 4690–4695, 2006

Fabric electrodes coated with polypyrrole nanorods for flexible supercapacitor application prepared via a reactive self-degraded template

“…2. The weight increase for the PPy-2h sample was about 46.2%, which is close to that found for the PPy-coated cotton fabrics [40]. The weight increment decreased dramatically when MO was introduced, which was about 23% and 13% for the PPy/MO fabrics with a polymerization time of 1 h and 2 h, respectively.…”

Dielectric and morphological studies of nanostructured polypyrrole-coated cotton fabrics

“…26,27 The methods used in chemical polymerization are as follows: in situ polymerization, 17 two-step polymerization, 19,[22][23][24] emulsion polymerization 9 and vapor phase polymerization. 20,26 The synthesis of PPy on textile substrates is carried out by ferric chloride (FeCl 3 ) and ammonium persulfate (APS).…”

Hysteresis Phenomenon in Heat–Voltage Curves of Polypyrrole-Coated Electrospun Nanofibrous and Regular Fibrous Mats

“…13 Heat generation by conductive polymer-coated textiles has been studied by a number of researchers, 1,7,10,14-19 a brief summary of which is provided here. Bhat et al 14 19 investigated the effect of alkaline weight reduction pretreatment on the heat generation capability of PPy-coated PET fabrics, and found that weight-reduced PET fabrics coated with PPy enjoy a higher heat generation capability as a result of the surface roughness of the treated fibers. Shang et al 10 studied the effect of polymerization on the heat generation capability of PPy-coated PET fabrics.…”