The growing interest in wearable devices has drawn increased attention to smart textiles, and various transfer methods have therefore been introduced to realize the desired functions using textiles as substrates. However, the existing transfer techniques are not suited for the production of sophisticated nanoscale patterns on textiles, as textile roughness and difficulty of precise pattern size control hinder miniaturization, deteriorate device performance, and complicate the use of optical phenomena such as surface plasmon resonance. To address these limitations, we have developed a method based on simple dissolution of a water-soluble nanopatterned polymer film for the facile transfer of nanostructures of on-film-deposited functional materials onto textile substrates. The above method tolerates a variety of functional materials, e.g., metals and SiO2, and nano/microscale structures, e.g., nanoscale lines, dots, holes, and mesh patterns with a minimum pattern width of 50 nm. The proposed technique is employed to fabricate a palladium nanoscale line array (utilized as a highly sensitive and selective hydrogen sensor) and is shown to be suitable for the production of security patterns on textiles, as it allows the printing of complex nanostructure patterns with electrical and optical functionalities.
Keywords: gas sensor; nanostructure; nanotransfer printing; smart textile; water-soluble polymer.