Electromechanical Behavior of Fibers Coated with an Electrically Conductive Polymer

Abstract

Fibers/fabrics coated with conductive polymers exhibit sensing capacities for external stimuli like strain, temperature, relative humidity, etc. In this paper, we present our recent investigation of the sensing behavior and mechanical analysis of polymer fibers coated with an intrinsically conductive polymer, i.e., polypyrrole (PPy). PPy-coated PA6 fibers and PPy-coated Lycra fibers are prepared by chemical vapor deposition using pyrrole in the presence of an oxidizing agent, and their electromechanical behavior under tensile load is studied experimentally. The mechanism governing the electromechanical behavior of these conductive fibers is investigated, and the effects of various factors that are respon sible for variations in the electrical resistance are discussed. An electromechanical model is proposed that correlates the resistance change with the applied strain, the damage level of the conductive fibers, the environmental temperature, and the relative humidity. The model provides a theoretical basis for the analysis and design of electrically conductive fabrics.

Research and Application of the Property of Conductive Knitted Fabrics

“…the unit length of conductive fiber resistance is invariable, and isn't impacted by the stretching and distortion in certain stretching range (Xue, 2004). When the fabrics are drawn, the transfers of various loops are consistent, i.e.…”

The deposition of globular polypyrrole and polypyrrole nanotubes on cotton textile

“…Conducting textiles find applications as antistatic substrates [3], in electromagnetic interference shielding [6,[9][10][11][12][13][14][15], electrochromic devices [16], electromechanical sensors [17,18], electrodes in supercapacitors [4,19], electrocardiogram monitoring [20] or dye-sensitized solar cells [21], as flexible electrodes [22], or in heat generation [23][24][25]. In addition to conductivity, conducting polymers have been be used to control wettability [5,26,27], to promote flame retardation [28][29][30], to be applied as antimicrobial coatings [15,31,32] or in noble-metal recovery [33].…”

“…The conducting polymer becomes physically adsorbed rather than chemically bonded to the substrate but its adhesion is strong. Various fabrics have been used in the literature as a substrates for the coating with polypyrrole: cotton [7,11,14,20-22, 24,44,45], linen [19], polyamide [17][18][19]33,46], polyester [19,25,46,47], poly(ethylene terephthalate) [10,23,46,48,41], polypropylene [49], silk [26,50], viscose [19,49], or wool [45,48,[51][52][53]. In some cases fabrics were cleaned before the polymerization to remove impurities [3,43].…”

Knitted Resistive Fabric: Properties and Applications

“…References (9) and (10) propose strain sensing elements created by coating Lycra/cotton fabrics with polypyrrole and carbon loaded rubber. Coated strain sensors made by using different polymer materials with conductive carbon particles are also investigated in (11) and (12). Such sensors may be integrated into the garment by using special printing methods.…”