Reduced Graphene Oxide and Nanoparticles Incorporated Durable Electroconductive Silk Fabrics

Graphene derivatives have the capability of forming chemical bonding with fabrics and show the potential to be used in smart textiles. However, the challenge is to fabricate highly conductive multifunctional fabric with good washing durability. Herein, reduced graphene oxide (RGO) and silver (Ag)/copper (Cu) nanoparticles (NPs)-coated durable electroconductive silk fabric is fabricated by facile dip and dry method using 3-glycidyloxypropyl trimethoxy silane as coupling agent (CA). Results show that RGO and NPs-coated fabrics not only demonstrate low surface resistance but also excellent electrothermal property, UV shielding, enhanced thermal stability, and outstanding hydrophobicity consistently in the following order: pure silk<silk-RGO<silk-CA-RGO<silk-CA-RGO-Ag<silk-CA-RGO-Cu. The addition of CA and NPs is found to have a significant impact on performance and washing durability. Cu incorporated samples (silk-CA-RGO-Cu) show a very low value of surface resistance (3.15 k omega sq(-1)) and even after washing 20 times, the resistance (6.76 k omega sq(-1)) is observed to be lower than unwashed non-Cu incorporated samples. Moreover, silk-CA-RGO-Cu also has the highest UV resistance, Joule heating, hydrophobicity, and thermal stability among all samples, which makes it well suited for numerous potential applications including protective clothing, health monitoring, motion sensing, and sports clothing.