Smart Electronic Yarns and Wearable Fabrics for Human Biomonitoring made by Carbon Nanotube Coating with Polyelectrolytes

The idea of electronic yarns and textiles has appeared for quite some time, but their properties often do not meet practical expectations. In addition to chemical/mechanical durability and high electrical conductivity, important materials qualifications include weavablity, wearability, light weight,...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nano letters 2008-12, Vol.8 (12), p.4151-4157
Main Authors: Shim, Bong Sup, Chen, Wei, Doty, Chris, Xu, Chuanlai, Kotov, Nicholas A
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Catalytic methods
Condensed matter: electronic structure, electrical, magnetic, and optical properties
Cross-disciplinary physics: materials science
rheology
Electrolytes
Electronic structure and electrical properties of surfaces, interfaces, thin films and low-dimensional structures
Electronic transport in multilayers, nanoscale materials and structures
Environmental Monitoring - instrumentation
Exact sciences and technology
Humans
Materials science
Methods of nanofabrication
Microscopy, Electron, Scanning
Nanocrystalline materials
Nanoscale materials and structures: fabrication and characterization
Nanotubes
Nanotubes, Carbon
Physics
Textiles
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Summary:The idea of electronic yarns and textiles has appeared for quite some time, but their properties often do not meet practical expectations. In addition to chemical/mechanical durability and high electrical conductivity, important materials qualifications include weavablity, wearability, light weight, and “smart” functionalities. Here we demonstrate a simple process of transforming general commodity cotton threads into intelligent e-textiles using a polyelectrolyte-based coating with carbon nanotubes (CNTs). Efficient charge transport through the network of nanotubes (20 Ω/cm) and the possibility to engineer tunneling junctions make them promising materials for many high-knowledge-content garments. Along with integrated humidity sensing, we demonstrate that CNT−cotton threads can be used to detect albumin, the key protein of blood, with high sensitivity and selectivity. Notwithstanding future challenges, these proof-of-concept demonstrations provide a direct pathway for the application of these materials as wearable biomonitoring and telemedicine sensors, which are simple, sensitive, selective, and versatile.
ISSN:1530-6984
1530-6992
DOI:10.1021/nl801495p