Highly Conductive and Flexible Dopamine-Graphene Hybrid Electronic Textile Yarn for Sensitive and Selective NO2 Detection

Sang Won Lee; Hyo Gi Jung; Insu Kim; Dongtak Lee; Woong Kim; Sang Hun Kim; Jong-Heun Lee; Jinsung Park; Jeong Hoon Lee; Gyudo Lee; Dae Sung Yoon

doi:10.1021/acsami.0c11435

Highly Conductive and Flexible Dopamine-Graphene Hybrid Electronic Textile Yarn for Sensitive and Selective NO₂ Detection

ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2020 Oct 14;12(41):46629-46638. doi: 10.1021/acsami.0c11435. Epub 2020 Sep 24.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ School of Biomedical Engineering, Korea University, Seoul 02841, South Korea.
² Department of Control and Instrumentation Engineering, Korea University, Sejong 30019, South Korea.
³ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Korea University, Seoul 02841, South Korea.
⁴ Department of Electrical Engineering, Kwangwoon University, Seoul 01897, Republic of Korea.
⁵ Department of Biotechnology and Bioinformatics, Korea University, Sejong 30019, South Korea.

PMID: 32914616
DOI: 10.1021/acsami.0c11435

Abstract

Graphene-based electronic textile (e-textile) gas sensors have been developed for detecting hazardous NO₂ gas. For the e-textile gas sensor, electrical conductivity is a critical factor because it directly affects its sensitivity. To obtain a highly conductive e-textile, biomolecules have been used for gluing the graphene to the textile surface, though there remain areas to improve, such as poor conductivity and flexibility. Herein, we have developed a dopamine-graphene hybrid electronic textile yarn (DGY) where the dopamine is used as a bio-inspired adhesive to attach graphene to the surface of yarns. The DGY shows improved electrical conductivity (∼40 times) compared to conventional graphene-based e-textile yarns with no glue. Moreover, it exhibited improved sensing performance in terms of short response time (∼2 min), high sensitivity (0.02 μA/ppm), and selectivity toward NO₂. The mechanical flexibility and durability of the DGY were examined through a 1000-cycle bending test. For a practical application, the DGY was attempted to detect the NO_x emitted from vehicles, including gasoline, diesel, and fuel cell electric vehicles. Our results demonstrated that the DGYs-as a graphene-based e-textile gas sensor for detecting NO₂-are simple to fabricate, cheap, disposable, and mechanically stable.

Keywords: E-textile gas sensor; dopamine; flexible device; graphene; nitrogen dioxide.