Immobilization of Air-Stable Copper Nanoparticles on Graphene Oxide Flexible Hybrid Films for Smart Clothes

Peng-Yang Huang; Chen-Yang Huang; Jia-Wun Li; Sheng-Yen Shen; Chih-Chia Cheng; Chih-Wei Chiu; Ru-Jong Jeng; Jiang-Jen Lin

doi:10.3390/polym14020237

Immobilization of Air-Stable Copper Nanoparticles on Graphene Oxide Flexible Hybrid Films for Smart Clothes

Polymers (Basel). 2022 Jan 7;14(2):237. doi: 10.3390/polym14020237.

Authors

Peng-Yang Huang¹, Chen-Yang Huang², Jia-Wun Li², Sheng-Yen Shen¹, Chih-Chia Cheng³, Chih-Wei Chiu², Ru-Jong Jeng¹, Jiang-Jen Lin⁴

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Polymer Science and Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taipei 10617, Taiwan.
² Department of Materials Science and Engineering, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taipei 10607, Taiwan.
³ Graduate Institute of Applied Science and Technology, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taipei 10607, Taiwan.
⁴ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, National Chung Hsing University, Taichung 40227, Taiwan.

Abstract

Through the use of organic/inorganic hybrid dispersants-which are composed of polymeric dispersant and two-dimension nanomaterial graphene oxide (GO)-copper nanoparticles (CuNPs) were found to exhibit nano stability, air-stable characteristics, as well as long-term conductive stability. The polymeric dispersant consists of branched poly(oxyethylene)-segmented esters of trimellitic anhydride adduct (polyethylene glycol-trimethylolpropane-trimellitic anhydride, designated as PTT). PTT acts as a stabilizer for CuNPs, which are synthesized via in situ polymerization and redox reaction of the precursor Cu(CH₃COO)₂ within an aqueous system, and use graphene oxide to avoid the reduction reaction of CuNPs. The results show that after 30 days of storage the CuNPs/PTT/GO composite film maintains a highly conductive network (9.06 × 10^-1 Ω/sq). These results indicate that organic/inorganic PTT/GO hybrid dispersants can effectively maintain the conductivity stability of CuNPs and address the problem of CuNP oxidation. Finally, the new CuNPs/PTT/GO composite film was applied to the electrocardiogram (ECG) smart clothes. This way, a stable and antioxidant-sensing electrode can be produced, which is expected to serve as a long-term ECG monitoring device.

Keywords: copper nanoparticles; electrical conductivity; electrocardiogram; graphene oxide; nanohybrids; polymeric dispersant; smart clothes.