Fabrication of highly conductive graphene particle-coated fiber yarns using polymeric binders through efficient coating techniques

Electrically conductive yarns have been produced by fabricating graphene particles (both graphene nanoplatelets and reduced graphene oxide) on glass, flax, and polypropylene yarns using binding materials (epoxy resin and thermoplastic starch solution) and a dip coating process. Three different dip coating processes have been developed to identify an efficient method of coating in terms of improving electrical conductivity. Morphological study has been carried out to understand the mechanism at the interphase between binder and conductive particles, and it has been found that Van der Waals force and adhesive bonding are higher with epoxy-based samples than those of starch-based. Glass fiber yarns (with epoxy binder and rGO/GNP) have been identified as having the highest electrical conductivity of 0.1 S/cm.