Ultra-flexible, stretchable, highly conductive and multi-functional textiles enabled by brush-painted PEDOT:PSS

Abstract

Electronic textile (E-textile) with excellent electrical/mechanical properties in large area is an essential component for wearable electronics. We herein demonstrated that brush-painting is a promising printing technique of poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):poly(styrenesulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS) on fabric substrates to prepare ultra-flexible, stretchable, and highly conductive E-textiles. The brush-painting allows uniform film surface with much lower sheet resistance which is opposite to agglomerated particulates of the film from the drop-casting. As a result, the PEDOT:PSS-based E-textiles achieve high conductivity of 6.4 S cm−1 after successive bush-painting up to 50 times with excellent mechanical properties including bending, stretching, and washing stability. The brush-painted E-textiles exhibit excellent Joule heating properties with low operative voltage and quick response time. In addition, the large-area piezoresistive sensors have been realized by the brush-painted E-textiles, suggesting its great potential of the brush-painting PEDOT:PSS toward multi-functional smart textiles or wearable electronics.

Environmentally Stable, Highly Conductive, and Mechanically Robust Metallized Textiles

“…Copyright 2010 American Chemical Society], carbonized silk [reproduced from ref . Copyright 2016 Wiley-VCH], poly­(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):poly­(styrene sulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS) [reproduced from ref . Copyright 2020 IOP Publishing, Ltd], and PPy [reproduced from ref open access].…”

“…Generally, the knitted fabrics can achieve higher stretchability than woven ones. The conductivity of metal-based stretchable fabrics ,,, is generally superior to that of carbon-based ,,, and conducting-polymer-based , textiles. In particular, Someya’s group reported an Ag-based textile with a low sheet resistance of 0.06 Ω sq –1 and high stretchability up to 450%.…”

Experiments and Analysis of a Nonlinear Sickle‐Shaped Cantilever Beam Piezoelectric Energy Harvester for Wind Energy Harvesting

“…Therefore, the use of a clean energy source that can provide real-time power to these types of electronic devices has great market value and social benefits. Harvesting energy from the environment to wirelessly charge such electronic devices directly is one of the effective ways, including solar energy, [3,4] fluid, [5,6] mechanical operations, [7,8] human [9,10] and animal [11] activities, etc. A large number of energy conversion devices and technologies have been researched today to harvest energy from these environments, including thermoelectric, [12,13] electrostatic, [14,15] triboelectric nanogenerator, [16,17] and piezoelectric.…”

A Facile Solution Engineering of PEDOT:PSS-Coated Conductive Textiles for Wearable Heater Applications

“…As an alternative, conducting polymers have emerged as promising conductive materials for the development of E-textiles because their intrinsic flexibility, light weight, low cost, conformability with the human body, and potential of solution processing. Poly (3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene): poly (styrene sulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS) is one of the most well-established conducting polymers [ 18 , 19 , 20 ]. PEDOT:PSS material has the advantages of high mechanical flexibility, biocompatibility, solution processability, thermal stability, and long-term stability when compared to other conductive polymers.…”