Electrochemical Deposition of Conductive Polymers on Fabrics

Abstract

The development of wearable technology has promoted the research of new power supply sources to feed wearable devices without the need of batteries. Wearable thermoelectric generators (wTEGs) can generate energy using the thermal gradient between the human body and the ambient temperature. The most comfortable way to adapt wTEGs to the human body is by using textiles, which are flexible and breathable. In this work, we have developed a method to coat textiles with conductive polymers by electrodeposition on fabrics previously coated with multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT). The results show that the fabrics coated with polyaniline: sulfuric acid (PANI:H2SO4) present a very low thermal stability, and the variation of the electrical conductivity under wearable stress is not suitable for their use in smart textiles. However, the fabrics coated with poly (3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene: perchlorate) (PEDOT:ClO4) and polypyrrole: perchlorate (PPy:ClO4) show a good thermal stability, positive evolution of the electrical conductivity as a function of the twist angle, bending cycles, and bending radius, demostrating their potential use in practical wearable applications to coat fabrics by electrochemical deposition.