A facile approach towards ZnO nanorods conductive textile for room temperature multifunctional sensors

Conductive fabric (smart textile) is an important research area since large part of the surfaces that we interact daily is the clothing that we wear. Here, we have demonstrated facile growth of zinc oxide nanorods fabric via a low cost and temperature as well as scalable solution process. The nanorods are grown uniformly, radially oriented and densely covers on each fibre to form a conductive fabric. The uniformity and high crystallinity of the nanorods allow the fabric to be conductive. Mechanical testing of the nanorods-on-fabric devices shows robustness against stress and washing cycles. The conductive fabric shows excellent multiple sensing (gas and optical) performances at room temperature. These ready-to-wear nanomaterials based clothing addresses the possibilities of multifunctional wearable sensors for healthcare, military and environmental applications. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.