Graphene as a Textile Fiber: A Short Review

 

Introduction

Graphene fiber (GF), a new breed of carbonaceous fiber with high expectations in science and technology, starting from low-cost graphite and are directly assembled from graphene and graphene derivatives. In recent days works on GF have increased steadily from the year of its development, indicating that the high expectations of GF have received growing interest from the scientific community. The consequent contributions have boosted the mechanical and conducting performance of graphene fiber with a continuously rising trend. GFs represent a brand-new horizon for fabricating carbonaceous fibers, and a new branch to the development of structural–functional integrated materials.

History and Evolution of Graphene Fiber

The history of carbonaceous fibers can be traced back to the nineteenth century. In 1860, J. Swan used carbon filament as the emitter of an electric lamp. Soon after, T. A. Edison realized the vacuum sealing of electric lamps, enabling carbon filaments to emit visible light for a record 45 hours. One century later, A. Shindo initiated the research and development of carbon fibers (CFs). Commercial CFs are usually fabricated by the carbonization and pyrolysis of organic precursor fibers, mainly including three prevailing species: poly-acrylonitrile (PAN), mesophase pitch, and rayon fibers.^[1] 

Figure 1: The evolution of carbonaceous fibers. Image: Copyright 2019, Advanced Materials.

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) discovered in 1991 are another suitable basic unit to construct carbonaceous fibers.^[2] After being first proposed by Fan and co-workers in 2002,^[3] the assembly of CNTs into CNT fibers has been achieved by two strategies, i. e., the dry spinning of CNT forests and the wet spinning of CNT fluids.^[4–7] In 2011, Prof. C. Gao and Z. Xu invented a new type of carbonaceous fiber, GF, by macroscopic wet-spinning assembly of graphene oxide (GO)  liquid crystals (LCs) dope followed by chemical reduction, opening the avenue to strong yet multifunctional carbonaceous fibers with resourceful carbon raw material (i.e., graphite).^[8] The evolution of carbonaceous fibers is pictured in Figure 1.

Preparation of Graphene Fiber

Graphene fiber (GF) is mainly a fibrous form of graphene or graphene derivatives. The finding of LCs from graphene and graphene derivatives, especially GO, guides an important preparation method: liquid crystalline wet spinning. This method has added privileges in the fabrication of GFs and has greatly extended to the production of neat, composite and hybrid graphene fibers, in a continuous and scalable manner. Additionally, other typical methods have emerged, for example, dry spinning, the confined hydrothermal strategy, and film twisting. By virtue of these methods, GFs with controllable composite natures and structures and desired performances have been fabricated to form new carbonaceous fiber species for rich applications. Thus, a multilevel hierarchy of the GF industry has been established, incorporating the scalable production of GO, stable wet spinning, superb GFs, and structural–functional integrated uses.^[9]

Figure 2: Preparation of industrual graphene fiber. Image: Image: Copyright 2019, Advanced Materials.

The axial orientation of graphene sheets plays a vital role in the mechanical strength of the GFs and these properties can be optimized by flow control, the coagulation choice, and stretching during the wet-spinning process.

Figure 3: The performance of GFs is associated with their preparation methods, including the heat treatment temperature, microstructure design, and tight control of the spinning procedures.^[10] Image:  Copyright 2019, Advanced Materials.

Morphology

The morphology of GFs could be easily adjusted to satisfy different operation conditions including porous, hollow, belt-like, helical, and core–sheath. Remarkably, all the GFs with different morphologies were fabricated by the wet-spinning method.^[11] It is important to mention that, these different cross sectional morphological structures are induced for different applications of GFs as their properties vary with these structure. Such as, porous GFs are introduced to achieve a high tensile strength and high electric conductivity to use as lightweight and flexible electronics while belt-like GFs have better knittability, and can be knotted into graphene textiles, and they have a higher capacity for use as dye-sensitized fiber solar cells and fabric-based super-capacitors. Thus every morphological structure have different mechanical, thermal and conductive properties and the can be obtained by the spinning process.

Properties-Application Correlation of Graphene Fiber

The overall properties of GFs are determined by the condensed state of their basic graphene units, which is controlled by procedures in the assembly process. Ongoing endeavors concerning GFs have together portrayed the connection between the multi-scale structure and the properties. The multi-scale structure of GFs can be analyzed as a series of sections, including the composition, orientation in the distance along the fiber axis, laminated stacking, interlayer interactions, and atomic structure of the graphene units. Two trends have been determined: one is that ordered compact structures result in high performance and conducting properties, and the other is that hierarchical winkles can be designed to provide flexibility, strong interface bonding, and high chemical reactivity. Between this two the older one is aimed at obtaining GFs with high mechanical performances and outstanding conducting properties, and the products by the other trend are suitable for multifunctional uses in electronic fibers and textiles. Nowadays, polymer/graphene nanocomposites with superior mechanical properties were manufactured via melt processing using an extremely low loading level of exfoliated graphene layers (i.e., less than 0.1 wt%) and by carefully choosing a polymer matrix.

Application: Graphene as a Textile Fiber

Graphene-based textiles are very promising for the next-generation due to their advantages over metal-based technologies. Properties like high electron mobility, high thermal conductivity, mechanical properties, easy functionalization etc. has made graphene as a revolutionary material in various fields of science and technology. Besides the textile industry is continuously integrating new materials to provide fabrics with new functionalities logically. And here the application of graphene has been arrived as a textile fiber recently which has allowed the integration and development of textiles with different functionalities such as: antistatic, UV-protecting, electroconductive, photo-catalytic, anti-bacterial, thermal conductivity, energy storage in flexible super-capacitors, electrodes for batteries, sensors, etc. Here some of those major and promising applications are mentioned as follows^[12-16]: 1) Graphene-coated fabrics for UV-blocking, hydrophobic fabrics, electro-conductive fabrics, thermally conductive fabrics, flame retardant fabrics, Photo-catalytic fabrics, antibacterial and antifungal fabrics, heart rate monitoring fabrics,  strain, H₂O_2, glucose, NO₂ gas, acetone and methanol sensing fabrics, field emission displays, bendable X-ray generators, etc. 2) Graphene woven fabrics (GWF) for strain, torsion, movement, acoustic, pulse, monitoring etc. sensing purpose, building up solar cells, electromagnetic shielding, Super-capacitive materials, etc. 3) Graphene/polymer composite fibers based clothing for preparation of protective clothing, wound dressing, tissue engineering, biomedical and chemical engineering equipment, etc. 4) Multifunctional fabrics from graphene fiber for energy storage textiles, thermal management devices, transparent conductors, wearable electronics, etc. 5) Highly conductive graphene-based E-textiles. 6) Machine washable graphene-based E-textiles. 7) Ultraflexible graphene-based wearable E-textiles. 8) Scalable, ultra-flexible, and high-performance Super-capacitor based wearable E-textiles. And 9) Technical textiles for aerospace, automobile, marine, and wind energy industries. Shortly these are the applications of graphene as a textile fiber in large scale.

Figure 4: GF-based nonwoven and woven fabrics. A) Preparation of nonwoven fabric from GO solution. B) Wear able heater fabricated by twisting graphitized graphene films. C) The knittability of GO fibers. Image:  Copyright 2019, Advanced Materials.

Figure 5: (a) Uncoated cotton fabric, (b) Graphene-coated fabric, (c-f) Thermographs of graphene-coated fabrics with different coated weights. Image:  Copyright 2016, RSC Advances.

Figure 6: Red-dyed water droplets sitting on a) the original cotton; b) the graphene-cotton; c) the PMS-graphene-cotton. The images on the right show corresponding goniometer images for 5 μL droplets.^[18] Image:  Copyright 2016, RSC Advances.

Electro-Conductive Cotton Using Graphene

Electro-conductive cotton textiles were successfully prepared using graphene. GO nanosheets were deposited on the cotton fibers via “dip and dry” method followed by chemical reduction which caused their conversion into conductive graphene. Considering low cost, easy preparation, simple and effective coating, these electro-conductive fabrics are expected to have high potential for being used in advanced applications such as smart and E-textiles. ^[17]

Conclusion

Textile fabrics represent various advantages when compared with sheet materials, such as their high surface area, flexibility, mechanical properties, etc., which make them attractive substrates where other functional materials can be deposited. Besides, graphene materials have emerged as a revolutionary material in the field of materials science and physics due to their extraordinary properties. These materials provide a conductive platform that can be integrated into textiles by means of chemical deposition, by producing graphene woven fabrics or by integrating conductive fibers of graphene in the fabrics. The applications of these type of fabrics (made from graphene and graphene derivatives) can be: UV protection, conducting fabrics, antistatic fabrics, IR emission, hydrophobic fabrics, sensors for electrocardiogram acquisition, heat generation, thermal conduction, photo-catalytic activity, electro-catalytic activity, antibacterial, antifungal, gas and liquid sensors, anode for microbial fuel cells, cathode for solar cells, field emission devices, capacitive materials for energy storage, etc. The development in these areas mentioned in the application section is promising due to the wide response of this fiber in different conditions. And thus it is one of the promising material in textile industry.

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