Conductive Nanocomposite Cotton Thread Strands for Wire and Industrial Applications

Abstract

This paper reports the synthesis of conducting cotton thread strands obtained by dip coating in sodium dodecyl-benzene sulfonate (SDBS) surfactant with dispersed single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNT), as a promising candidate for energy storage applications. The effect of the dispersion and SDBS in the dissolved SWCNT solution was detected using field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM) and x-ray diffraction (XRD). XRD confirms that there was good dispersion of SWCNTs on the cotton thread strands obtained by doping employing ethylene glycol (EG) which lowers the corrugation of the cotton thread. FE-SEM images obtained at different magnifications show micro-fibril structure. Energy dispersive x-ray (EDX) analysis confirms the presence of only C, Na and S, ruling out the presence of any elemental impurity. A strong decrease from 3.587Ω to 0.01257Ω in electrical resistance was observed when the concentration of SWCNTs was increased from 0.008049 wt.% to 1.07269 wt.%, indicating that the SWCNTs induced conductive properties in the cotton thread strands. The study shows that sodium dodecyl benzyl sulfonate (SDBS) has the best dispersion of single-walled carbon nanotubes in water when used along with ethylene glycol. The results show that the coated threads can have great industrial applications as conduction wire substitute.