Abstract
Smart textiles based on conjugated polymers have been highlighted as promising fabrics that can intelligently respond to environmental stimuli based on the electrical properties of polymer semiconductors. However, there has been limited interest in the photothermal properties of conjugated polymers that can be applied to smart textiles. We prepared nanoparticles by assembling a conjugated polymer with a fatty acid via an emulsion process and nanocomposite fibers by distributing the conjugated polymer nanoparticles in a polyacrylonitrile matrix. We then fabricated the textiles using the fibers. The resulting fabrics based on nanocomposite fibers show a temperature increase to 50 °C in 10 min under white light irradiation because of efficient photothermal conversion by the conjugated polymer light harvester, while the temperature of a pristine polyacrylonitrile fabric increases to only 35 °C. In addition, excellent antimicrobial activity was confirmed by a 99.9% decrease in the populations of Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli over 24 h because of the effect of the fatty acid in the nanocomposite films and fabrics. Furthermore, the fabric showed efficient durability after a laundry test, suggesting the usefulness of these smart textiles based on conjugated polymer nanoparticles for practical applications.
Highlights
Smart textiles that can sense environmental stimuli, and that can thermally, chemically, electrically, mechanically, or magnetically respond to stimuli, are increasingly attracting attention for applications in medical/health care, sports, fashion, and the military [1,2,3]
Spherical conjugated polymer nanoparticles (CPNs) of PCPDTBT and octanoic acid (OA) formed in the DMSO (Figure 1a) via an emulsification process
A chloroform solution of PCPDTBT was dropwise added to a DMSO solution of OA with stirring, followed by formation of the emulsion of the chloroform solutions and removal of chloroform at an elevated temperature of 80 ◦ C, a higher temperature than its boiling point
Summary
Smart textiles that can sense environmental stimuli, and that can thermally, chemically, electrically, mechanically, or magnetically respond to stimuli, are increasingly attracting attention for applications in medical/health care, sports, fashion, and the military [1,2,3]. Smart textiles that employ conjugated polymers as a heat generator via photothermal conversion after absorbing solar energy have not been widely studied It is mainly because the focus of studies using conjugated polymers has been on the utilization of their semiconducting property for electrode materials [5,6,7,8,9]. We demonstrated that conjugated polymer nanoellipsoids assembled with a fatty acid could be composited with polyurethane via hydrogen bonding and that the resultant multifunctional nanocomposite films showed both photothermal conversion and antibacterial activities [26]. Nanocomposite films with only 1 wt % of nanoellipsoids reached a temperature higher than 40 ◦ C in only 10 min of white light irradiation because of the photothermal conversion of the conjugated polymer with a narrow bandgap They eliminated 99.9% of the Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) and Escherichia coli (E. coli) from their surfaces because of the fatty acids.
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