Abstract
Inkjet-printed wearable electronic textiles (e-textiles) are considered to be very promising due to excellent processing and environmental benefits offered by digital fabrication technique. Inkjet-printing of conductive metallic inks such as silver (Ag) nanoparticles (NPs) are well-established and that of graphene-based inks is of great interest due to multi-functional properties of graphene. However, poor ink stability at higher graphene concentration and the cost associated with the higher Ag loading in metal inks have limited their wider use. Moreover, graphene-based e-textiles reported so far are mainly based on graphene derivatives such as graphene oxide (GO) or reduced graphene oxide (rGO), which suffers from poor electrical conductivity. Here we report inkjet printing of highly conductive and cost-effective graphene-Ag composite ink for wearable e-textiles applications. The composite inks were formulated, characterised and inkjet-printed onto PEL paper first and then sintered at 150 °C for 1 hr. The sheet resistance of the printed patterns is found to be in the range of ~0.08–4.74 Ω/sq depending on the number of print layers and the graphene-Ag ratio in the formulation. The optimised composite ink was then successfully printed onto surface pre-treated (by inkjet printing) cotton fabrics in order to produce all-inkjet-printed highly conductive and cost-effective electronic textiles.
Highlights
Be produced at lower cost[28]
A number of limitations still exist with such inks and their fabrication process developed so far: such as lower graphene concentration and residual solvent in the printed electronics[33,34], time consuming process and toxic solvents[24], repeated and complicated process[12], a higher annealing temperature and a number of inkjet layers needed to achieve the desired conductivity[35]
In order to overcome such challenges, here we propose the formulation of highly conductive silver nanoparticles decorated graphene-based composite inkjet ink that can achieve desired electrical conductivity with few layers of printing
Summary
Be produced at lower cost[28]. Our recent studies have shown promise of using graphene derivatives such as GO or rGO for wearable e-textiles applications[3,10,29,30,31]. In order to overcome such challenges, here we propose the formulation of highly conductive silver nanoparticles decorated graphene-based composite inkjet ink that can achieve desired electrical conductivity with few layers of printing. Previous studies[15,17,36,37,38,39] reported composite formulations containing metal nanoparticles such as Ag and Cu, and carbon-based materials such as graphene and carbon nanotubes (CNT), limited to lower concentration and not demonstrated for printing onto challenging substrates like textiles for wearable applications. We report inkjet printing of highly conductive graphene-silver nanoparticles-based composite ink for wearable e-textiles applications. The optimised graphene-silver composite ink was printed on surface pre-treated (by inkjet) textiles for highly conductive wearable e-textiles applications
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