Engineering PEDOT:PSS/PEG Fibers with a Textured Surface toward Comprehensive Personal Thermal Management

Abstract

The wild environment is unpredictable where soaring or plummeting temperatures in extreme weather events can pose serious threats to human lives. Incorporating passive evaporative cooling and controllable electric heating into clothing could effectively protect human beings from such harsh environments. In this work, poly(3,4-ethylene dioxy thiophene):poly(styrene sulfonate)/poly(ethylene glycol) (PPP) fibers with the core–shell structure and attractively textured surface have been successfully prepared via a single-nozzle wet-spinning technique. Results show that the fibers possess fascinating specific surface area (184.8 m2·g–1), electrical conductivity (50 S·cm–1), and stretchability (>100%) because of the novel preparation method and hierarchical morphological design. Through simple textile manufacturing routes, PPP fibers can be woven into fabrics easily, which exhibit desirable breathability, washability, and mechanical strength for smart textiles while maintaining favorable hygroscopicity. Benefiting from the textured structure with large specific surface area, PPP fabric exhibits attractile evaporative cooling rate. Practical application tests have demonstrated that under direct sunlight, the surface temperature of the PPP fabric is ∼5.2 and ∼10.8 °C lower than commercial cotton and polyester fabrics, respectively. Meanwhile, as conductive fibers, the resultant PPP fabric can heat under low-power electricity, therefore achieving the effect of “warmth in winter and coolness in summer”. The facile fabrication process and elevated performance of PPP fibers present significant advantages for applications in intelligent garments and textiles, as well as comprehensive personal thermal management, which opens a new avenue for future design in these fields.

Flexible Thermopiles Based on Hydrogels with Carriers Moving in Opposite Directions

“…In comparison to other methods, the addition of PAM in this work can remarkably improve the thermoelectricity of PEDOT:PSS. For example, it is clear that the Seebeck coefficient of PP (−2.33 mV/K) is much higher than that of other PEDOT:PSS-based thermoelectric materials (usually microvolts per Kelvin) . Because this approach raises the ratio of PSS to PEDOT rather than reducing it, as shown in Figure e, the ratio of PEDOT to PSS in PP is 0.2, which is 0.2 less than the ratio in pristine PEDOT:PSS .…”

Weavable thermoelectrics: advances, controversies, and future developments

“…Among them, thermoelectric fibers with typical 1D macroscopic morphologies have garnered significant research attention. These fibers include carbon-based materials (such as CNTs) [43,[122][123][124][125][126][127][128][129][130], organic conducting polymers (such as PEDOT:PSS) [131][132][133][134][135][136][137][138][139][140][141][142][143][144][145][146][147], and some inorganic materials (such as core-shell structured thermoelectric fibers) [148][149][150][151]. Composite fibers have also been extensively studied, including composites of carbon and organic materials [42,[152][153][154][155][156][157][158][159][160][161], carbon and nano-inorganic materials [162], and composites of organic materials as matrices with nanoinorganic materials as fillers [163][164...…”

“…Generally, PEDOT:PSS fiber is one of the most focused organic weavable thermoelectric materials [131,136,142,144,145], which is usually fabricated by wetspinning technique [133,134,137,138,140,143,146]. Sometimes organic composites are designed to meet specific requirements, such as PEDOT:PSS/PVA [135,139,197], PEDOT:PSS/waterborne polyurethane (WPU) [132], PEDOT:PSS/poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) [147], etc. In addition to the traditional wet-spinning method, one of the most advanced techniques to fabricate organic fibers for assembling weavable thermoelectrics is 3D printing.…”

Recent advances in the construction and application of stretchable PEDOT smart electronic membranes

“…The stretchable structures of electronic membranes can be divided into: wrinkled, cracked, fibrous, patterned, and micro–nano hierarchical structures. 119,120 For PEDOT membranes with different structures, selecting appropriate materials and preparation processes is necessary. At the same time, fine analysis and testing of smart PEDOT membranes with different structures are required to evaluate their performance in terms of accuracy and cycling stability and to provide reference and improvement for their applications.…”