Environmentally-friendly conductive cotton fabric as flexible strain sensor based on hot press reduced graphene oxide

• Published in: Carbon (New York) Vol. 111; pp. 622 - 630
• Main Authors: Ren, Jiesheng, Wang, Chaoxia, Zhang, Xuan, Carey, Tian, Chen, Kunlin, Yin, Yunjie, Torrisi, Felice
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Elsevier Ltd 01.01.2017; Elsevier BV
• Subjects: carbon; Compressive properties; cost effectiveness; Cotton; cotton fabric; Cotton fabrics; Deposition; Dispersion; Electrical resistance; Electrical resistivity; Fabrics; filtration; Graphene; graphene oxide; reducing agents; Reduction; tensile strength; Vacuum filtration; Viability; Washing
• ISSN: 0008-6223; 1873-3891
• DOI: 10.1016/j.carbon.2016.10.045

A flexible conductive cotton fabric was demonstrated by formulation and deposition of a graphene oxide (GO) dispersion onto a cotton fabric by vacuum filtration. The deposited GO amount was controlled by the concentration and volume of the GO dispersion. The GO was reduced by a hot press method at 180 °C for 60 min, and no chemical reductant was needed in both the deposition and reduction processes. The carbon-oxygen ratio increased from 1.77 to 3.72 after the hot press reduction. The as-prepared flexible conductive cotton fabric showed a sheet resistance as low as 0.9 kΩ/sq. The sheet resistance of the conductive cotton fabric only increased from ∼0.9 kΩ/sq to ∼1.2 kΩ/sq after 10 washing cycles, exhibiting good washability. The conductive cotton fabric showed viability as a strain sensor even after 400 bending cycles, in which the stable change in the electrical resistance went from ∼3500 kΩ under tensile strain to ∼10 kΩ under compressive strain. This cost-effective and environmentally-friendly method can be easily extended to scalable production of reduced GO based flexible conductive cotton fabrics.