Creation of polyaniline-coated polyester fabrics with conductive, electrothermal and energy-storage properties via micro-dissolution method

Incorporation of PANI with polyethylene terephthalate (PET) fibers has creates many flexible conductive, electrothermal and energy-storage textiles. The most common method of depositing PANI to PET fibers is in-situ polymerization. However, it usually needs long reaction time and strict conditions, which is unbeneficial to large-scale commercialized process. Herein, a facile and high-efficiency surface micro-dissolution method was proposed to prepare PANI-coated PET fabrics, which is performed at moderate temperature (70 degrees C) and only needs 15 min of treatment time. Already-made PANI powders were directly used as raw materials, and the phenol/N-methyl pyrrolidone (phenol/NMP) solution worked as the surface micro-dissolution agent. The resulting fabrics show electroconductive (620 Omega/square), electrothermal (from 22.3-30.3 degrees C within 1 min) and energy storage (438.51 m F cm(-2)) performances. The preparation is easy to perform and of very high efficiency, making it suitable for industrial production of PANI-coated PET fabrics.