• Rodriguez, Marian Gomez-Fatou
• Ellis, Gary J.
• Salavagione, Horacio
• Flores, Araceli
• Vega, Juan F.
• Leon-Boigues, Laia

Abstract

<jats:p>The combination of polyethylene terephthalate (PET), one of the most used polymers in the textile industry, with graphene, one of the most outstanding conductive materials in recent years, represents a promising strategy for the preparation of conductive textiles. This study focuses on the preparation of mechanically stable and conductive polymer textiles and describes the preparation of PET/graphene fibers by the dry-jet wet-spinning method from nanocomposite solutions in trifluoroacetic acid. Nanoindentation results show that the addition of a small amount of graphene (2 wt.%) to the glassy PET fibers produces a significant modulus and hardness enhancement (≈10%) that can be partly attributed to the intrinsic mechanical properties of graphene but also to the promotion of crystallinity. Higher graphene loadings up to 5 wt.% are found to produce additional mechanical improvements up to ≈20% that can be merely attributed to the superior properties of the filler. Moreover, the nanocomposite fibers display an electrical conductivity percolation threshold over 2 wt.% approaching ≈0.2 S/cm for the largest graphene loading. Finally, bending tests on the nanocomposite fibers show that the good electrical conductivity can be preserved under cyclic mechanical loading.</jats:p>

Topics

• nanocomposite
• polymer
• hardness
• nanoindentation
• bending flexural test
• electrical conductivity
• crystallinity
• spinning