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Volume 5, Issue 5 Res. Rev. J Mat. Sci. 2017
ISSN: 2321-6212 Advanced Materials 2017
September 07-08, 2017
September 07-08, 2017 | Edinburgh, Scotland
Advanced materials & Processing
11th International Conference on
Towards conductive textiles: Coating polymeric fibers with graphene
Ana I. S. Neves1, Elias Torres Alonso1,Saverio Russo1, Monica F. Craciun1, Daniela P. Rodrigues2 and Helena Alves2
1University of Exeter, UK
2 University of Aveiro, Portugal
The concept of smart-textiles is witnessing a rapid development with recent advances in nanotechnology andmaterials engineering.
Bearing in mind that the concept of textiles is much wider than clothes and garments, the potential is immense. While most
current commercial applications rely on conventional hardware simply mounted onto fibers or fabrics, a new approach to e-textiles
consisting in using functionalized textiles for several technological applications has the potential to change the paradigm of wearable
electronics completely. Conducting fibers are an important component of any e-textile, nor only because they can be used as wiring
for simple textile-based electronic component, but also because they can be used to build electronic devices directly on textile fibers.
We have reported a new method to coat insulating textile fibers with Monolayer graphene to make them conductive while preserving
their appearance. There are a number of factors that can greatly influence the sheet resistance achieved by graphene-coated textile
fibers. In order to understand the influence of the topography of the fibers on the effectiveness of the graphene coating, an extensive
study encompassing microscopy techniques like Atomic Force Microscopy and Scanning Thermal Microscopy, as well as Raman
spectroscopy was performed. This method has proven to be a versatile tool to achieve flexible, transparent and conducting fibers
of different materials, sizes and shapes. The first applications of electronic devices built on such fibers are demonstrated, with an
alternating current electroluminescent device, following previous work in our group on similar devices in flexible substrates. This
opens up the way for the realization of wearable devices on textiles.
Biography
Dr Ana Neves has a background in Chemistry, with a PhD awarded by IST, University of Lisbon, Portugal, for work carried out at the Solid State Group of ITN
(Lisbon), on the molecular engineering of materials with magnetic and electric properties. Pursuing the path of applications, she joined the Organic Electronics
group at INESC –Microsystems and Nanotechnology in Lisbon in 2013 as a postdoctoral researcher. Dr Neves joined the University of Exeter in October 2014 as
an Associate Research Fellow under the project "Wearable light emitting transistors for future communication devices". Since October 2016 she is a Lecturer in
Engineering, and currently holds a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship with project E-TEX "All-organic devices in textiles for wearable electronics". She
is also a member of the Nano-Engineering, Science and Technology Group (NEST).
Ana I. S. Neves et al., Res. Rev. J Mat. Sci. 2017, 5:5
DOI: 10.4172/2321-6212-C1-005
Figure1: a) Photo of the fibres in reels. b) Photo of the fibres
cut to ca. 3 cm length. c) Schematic representation of the
graphene transfer onto textile fibres