(708e) Enhanced Electrical Conductivity of Textile Fabrics VIA Polymeric Nanocomposites

General approaches to enhance the preferential properties of the textile fabrics include the embedment of relevant non-textile particles within structure or coverage of the surface with those particles. Among many properties, electrical conductivity of textile fabrics has attracted growing interest. The traditional fibers used in the textile fabrics are electrically insulating materials and the introduction of some conductivity will bring new usage areas to the textile fabrics, especially for health-related areas like antistatic and electromagnetic field shielding. The accepted technical approach for an increased conductivity of the textile fabrics is to incorporate the stainless steel and cooper wire as conductive fillers; however the existence of metal wires will increase fabric thickness, which is accepted as variation source on surface resistance.  Therefore coating conductive polymers (CP) onto textiles would allow power to flow through without incorporation of any wiring throughout the fabric. There are some studies on coating the textile fibrous surfaces with conductive polymers like polyaniline (PANI) and polypyrrole (PPy) via electrochemical and chemical oxidation polymerization (block or graft) onto the insulating fibers to obtain the composite conductive fibers. Metallic based CP nanocomposites are explored in view of their great variety of applications and improved electron transfer. Therefore, one particular research objective has been the dispersion of metal nanoparticles within the polymer matrix, since the incorporation of metal nanoparticles is known to enhance the conductivity of the polymers. Additionally, metal nanoparticles imbedded in CP matrix is claimed to serve as efficient electrocatalysts during oxidation and reduction of monomer and arrange CP into well-defined structure, avoid aggregation and give controllable particle size of nanocomposites. As a result, the textile surfaces covered with CP/metal nanoparticle would give a good level of electrical conductivity.  This study is conducted to investigate the enhancement of the electrical conductivity of 100% cotton knitted textile fabrics after covering with conductive polymer/metallic nanocomposites via completing the polymerization of CP at the presence of fabrics. Conductive PANI was selected as CP. The oxidant selected was ammonium peroxydisulfate (APS) and the protonic doping agent was p-toluene sulphonic acid (PTSA). Metal nanoparticles were selected as Fe@C and Co@C. Detailed analytical results will be reported.