Chemistry Commons^™

Solution Deposition Of Conformal Gold Coatings On Knitted Fabric For E-Textiles And Electroluminescent Clothing, Tricia Carmichael, Yunyun Wu, Sara S. Mechael, Yiting Chen

Chemistry and Biochemistry Publications

The vision for wearable electronics involves creating an imperceptible boundary between humans and devices. Integrating electronic devices into clothing represents an important path to this vision; however, combining conductive materials with textiles is challenging due to the porous structure of knitted textiles. Stretchability depends on maintaining the void structure between the yarns of the fabric; filling these voids with conductive materials stiffens the textile and can lead to detrimental cracking. The authors demonstrate the solution-based metallization of a knitted textile that conformally coats individual fibers with gold, leaving the void structure intact. The resulting gold-coated textile is highly conductive, with …