Wearable electronics is an emerging field in academics
and industry,
in which electronic devices, such as smartwatches and sensors, are
printed or embedded within textiles. The electrical circuits in electronics
textile (e-textile) should withstand many cycles of bending and stretching.
Direct printing of conductive inks enables the patterning of electrical
circuits; however, while using conventional nanoparticle-based inks,
printing onto the fabric results in a thin layer of a conductor, which
is not sufficiently robust and impairs the reliability required for
practical applications. Here, we present a new process for fabricating
robust stretchable e-textile using a thermodynamically stable, solution-based
copper complex ink, which is capable of full penetrating the fabric.
After printing on knitted stretchable fabrics, they were heated, and
the complex underwent an intermolecular self-reduction reaction. The
continuously formed metallic copper was used as a seed layer for electroless
plating (EP) to form highly conductive circuits. It was found that
the stretching direction has a significant role in resistivity. This
new approach enables fabricating e-textiles with high stretchability
and durability, as demonstrated for wearable gloves, toward printing
functional e-textile.