Solution‐based deposition of nano‐embossed metal electrodes on cotton fabrics for wearable heaters and supercapacitors

Abstract

Cotton fabrics have received substantial attention as promising substrates for wearable electronics due to their large surface area and flexibility. Although the majority of studies have been devoted to fabricating electrodes utilizing cotton, the simple fabrication process of highly-conductive metal electrodes inserted in fabrics has yet to be achieved. Herein, we demonstrate the facile, electroless deposition of Au electrodes inserted in cotton by a seed-mediated, metal-growth strategy. The sequencable deposition of Au was achieved by the autocatalytic reduction of Au ions with Au nanoparticle seeds which were electrostatically deposited on cotton. The deposition efficiency was significantly improved by effectively removing physisorbed silane molecules on amine-modified cotton. The design was applied to various E-textiles, that is, wearable heaters, and energy storage devices. The cotton-based, wearable heater exhibited excellent Joule heating properties up to 120°C at 1 V within only 2 seconds. The wearable supercapacitor with cathode-deposited MnO2 also demonstrated a promising, pseudo-capacitive performance of 167.55 F g−1 at 0.3 A g−1.