Polymer nanofibre composite nonwovens with metal-like electrical conductivity

Abstract

Bendable and breathable polymer nanofibre nonwovens with metal-like electrical conductivity are required for lightweight electrodes and electric shielding design with applications in batteries, functional textiles, sensors, cars, aerospace, constructions, mobile phones, and medical devices. Metal-like conductivity in polymer nonwovens has not been achieved till now due to the limitation of the existing processing techniques. We show here, the metal-like electrical conductivity of 750,000 S/m in polyacrylonitrile (PAN), poly(ε-caprolactone) (PCL) nonwoven using very low content of silver nanowires (AgNW; 3.35 vol%). The key to the high conductivity was the homogenous distribution of AgNW in nonwoven made by wet-laid process using short electrospun fibre and AgNW dispersion. Above a threshold of 0.36 vol% AgNW, the conductivity of the nonwoven increased by seven orders of magnitude, which we attribute to the onset of percolation of the AgNW. Our nonwoven-AgNW composites show fast heating and cooling within a few seconds at a voltage of 1.1 V, which is in the range of portable devices. These composites are also breathable and bendable. The electrical conductivity was independent of the bending angle of the composite, which is important for applications mentioned above and would help other scientists to design new conductive materials in the future.

A review of smart electrospun fibers toward textiles

“…9 (a) The schematic of fabrication of the PAN/PCL/AgNW nonwovens; (b) the SEM image of the morphology of the resulting PAN/PCL/AgNW nonwovens (scale bar: 1 μm); (c) the photograph of a lighted LED demonstrated the flexibility and conductivity of PAN/PCL nonwoven with around 1 vol% AgNWs. From an open access article [ 126 ]. …”

Scanning Electron Microscopy and Atomic Force Microscopy: Topographic and Dynamical Surface Studies of Blends, Composites, and Hybrid Functional Materials for Sustainable Future

“…e advantage of electrospun nanofibres is mimicking of Advances in Materials Science and Engineering three-dimensional structure of natural extracellular matrix, which predetermine them for biomedical and biotechnological application as tissue engineering, wound dressing, and drug release [57,58]. Besides this, it can be synthesised and tailored to suit a wide range of others applications including electronics [59,60], environmental engineering [61,62], agriculture [63,64], and food packaging [65,66].…”

Investigating the draw ratio and velocity of an electrically charged liquid jet during electrospinning

“…As one of the effective technologies for producing bers with an ultrathin ber diameter, electrospinning has attracted much attention recently 1,2 due to new perspectives for numerous applications in a broad range of areas, such as tissue engineering, 3,4 heavy metal detection, 5 ltration, [6][7][8][9][10] oil/water separation, [11][12][13][14] catalysts, [15][16][17][18][19] sensitive and responsive materials, [20][21][22][23][24] nanober reinforced composites, 25,26 high efficiency electrodes in electrochemical cells, [27][28][29][30] heat resistant materials, 31 white light-emitting materials, 32,33 and sponge materials. [34][35][36] During the electrospinning process, an electrically charged jet is created from a pendant droplet of polymer solution.…”