Enhanced electrical conductivity of silver nanoparticles decorated fabrics with sandwich micro-structure coating layer based on “silver colloid effect”

Abstract Surface modification of nonconductor fabric substrate for enhancing electrical conductivity is a desirable work of flexible wearable devices. In our work, silver conductive layer with sandwich micro-structure was decorated on polyester fabric, and such a sandwich micro-structure layer is composed of the inner polyurethane (PU) as the interface binder, the filling layer of the precipitating silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) as the conductive path via in-situ chemical synthesis, the outer PU layer as the shielding layer. The obtained sandwich micro-structure PET fabric possessed six orders of magnitude higher conductivity than that of the case without sandwich micro-structure. Such marvelous increasing conductivity can be attributed to the “silver colloid effect” which is deemed as approximation of conductive principle of silver conductive adhesives. The present study provides a potential strategy and theoretical basis for the preparation of low concentration silver conductive fabrics.