Scale production of conductive cotton yarns by sizing process and its conductive mechanism

Abstract

Conductive yarn is an important component and connector of electronic and intelligent textiles, and with the development of high-performance and low-cost conductive yarns, it has attracted more attention. Herein, a simple, scalable sizing process was introduced to prepare the graphene-coated conductive cotton yarns. The electron conductive mechanism of fibers and yarns were studied by the percolation and binomial distribution theory, respectively. The conductive paths are formed due to the conductive fibers' contact with each other, and the results revealed that the connection probability of the fibers in the yarn (p) is proportional to the square of the fibers filling coefficient (φ) as p ∝ φ2. The calculation formula of the staple spun yarn resistance can be derived from this conclusion and verified by experiments, which further proves the feasibility of produce conductive cotton yarns by sizing process.

Graphene-Based Flexible and Eco-Friendly Wearable Electronics and Humidity Sensors

“…The resulting resistance is highly linearly correlated with the sample length (R 2 = 0.94). These results indicate that the yarns coated with rGO are uniformly coated along the yarns and between different sections of the yarn, consistent with the reported findings in previous studies 37 . The slope of these linear graphs represents the resistivity of the yarns in kΩ/mm, determined as 8.47 for the cotton yarn coated with rGO with only 3 dip-coating cycles.…”