Scientists at the Research School of Chemical and Biomedical Technologies have developed a new material for "smart clothing" - textile electronics.
Researchers, under the guidance of Professors Evgeniia Sheremet and Raul Rodriguez, synthesized a hybrid conductive material based on synthetic fabric and graphene. To do this, they applied graphene oxide to nylon, which was then treated with a laser. The resulting composite is easy to manufacture and very stable.
During laser processing, the nylon melts, resulting in more than just the formation of a coating - graphene particles are embedded into the fabric fibers. This provides improved mechanical properties of the resulting composite. It is resistant to ultrasound, stretching and washing with detergents, which allows it to be used in everyday clothing. In addition, after laser treatment, the material becomes electrically conductive, which allows it to be used as an active material for sensors. It is especially important that our arbitrary-shaped composites can be used as is without insulation, which is usually required for materials made with a laser.
By applying silver particles to the textile and "fixing" them with a laser, the material was given another property - it became antibacterial.
The deposited silver particles have unique optical properties. This makes our hybrid textile promising for creating optical sensors. As plasmon particles, they allow reading signals that "describe" the chemistry of the surface using optical spectroscopy methods. We conducted a series of successful experiments to detect a model dye substance and glucose using silver.
The resulting hybrid textile is resistant to ultrasonic washing and detergents, and it is also not subject to deformation during washing.
