Fabrication of a type of silk/PEDOT conductive fibers for wearable sensor

Abstract

Flexible high-conductivity fibers have attracted much attention due to their great potential in the field of wearable electronic devices. However, how to ensure high conductivity and flexibility is still a challenge. In this paper, the flexible silk fibers were used as the substrate, and manganese oxides were generated on the surface by potassium permanganate treatment. On this basis, the flexible high conductivity silk fibers with a resistivity of 1.47 Ω·cm were prepared by in-situ chemical polymerization of 3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene(EDOT) on the surface of silk fibers. The surface morphology and chemical composition of silk fibers were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and inductively coupled plasma emission spectrometry (ICP). The results confirmed that a large amount of MnO 2 was synthesized and deposited on the surface of the silk fibers. The flexible conductive silk prepared by this method had good temperature sensitivity (- 0.47%/K), good stability and repeatability under cyclic tension, and the relative resistance change rate was 9.1%. Meanwhile, due to the binding force between the surface-active groups of the silk fibers and poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT), the conductive silk fibers exhibited good stability against water washing, demonstrating a broad application prospects in the field of wearable sensors.