Abstract
Smart fabrics that integrate electronic devices with textiles are emerging as potential candidate for apparel and electronics industries. Soft actuators based on conducting polymers are promising for smart fabrics because of light weight, flexibility, and large deformation under low voltage. However, due to the distinct characteristics of textile and electronic components, the connection between textiles and electronic devices still keeps a challenge in development of smart fabrics. Here, we report an new strategy to prepare a flexible and electroactive textile actuator. The fabric electrolyte was directly coated with an electrode ink, which is composed of Poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):poly(styrene sulfonic acid) doped with carbonized carbon nanotubes wired zeolite imidazolate framework-8 composite. A pre-treatment of the fabric was made by soaking hydrophobic poly(vinylidene fluoride-co-hexafluoropropylene) to increase the ionic conductivity (6.72 mS cm–1) and prevent the electrode ink from penetrating through the fabric. It was found that the textile actuator could work in air stably under a low voltage of 3 V and operate at frequencies from 0.1 to 10 Hz with large strain difference (0.28% at 0.1 Hz), fast strain rate (2.8% s–1 at 10 Hz) and good blocking force (0.62 mN at 0.1 Hz). The key to high performance originates from high ionic conductivity of fabric electrolyte and large specific surface area, good mechanical properties of the metal-organic framework derivative-based composite electrodes, which present insights into preparing other smart fabrics such as textiles sensors, flexible displays, and textile energy storage devices.
Highlights
Since the prehistoric times, humans have been using textiles, which is important and inseparable part of human life (Kaushik et al, 2015)
The electrode inks prepared by adding 0 mg, 20 mg, 30 mg and 40 mg of carbonized MOF were named as PEDOT:PSS, 10% CCZ8/P.P, 15% CCZ8/P.P, and 20% CCZ8/P.P
Preparation of Fabric Layer Gel polymer electrolyte solution was obtained by dissolving PVDF-HFP (5 g) in DMF at room temperature
Summary
Humans have been using textiles, which is important and inseparable part of human life (Kaushik et al, 2015). Flexible and Electroactive Textile Actuator widespread attention (Kaushik et al, 2015; Liu M. et al, 2017; Maziz et al, 2017; Zhang et al, 2018). The flexible intelligent actuator as a very important part of the electronic fabric can directly convert the external energy such as electricity, light, heat and humidity into the mechanical deformation individually, without need of a cumbersome energy conversion device (Dai et al, 2013; Hu et al, 2017; Lu et al, 2018; Wang et al, 2019). Among several types of i-EAPs, poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):poly(styrene sulfonic acid) (PEDOT:PSS) is a good candidate for electrode materials of flexible actuators due to its biocompatibility, fast reversible redox process and light weight. Aiva Simaite et al hydrophilically treated the surface of the hydrophobic poly(vinylidene fluoride-co-hexafluoropropylene) PVDF-HFP intermediate layer so that the electrode solution can be directly applied to the intermediate layer to form a film (Bar-Cohen et al, 2015)
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