Conducting textiles from single-walled carbon nanotubes

In this paper we present a simple and straightforward route to prepare conducting textiles by incorporating carbon nanotubes through a dyeing approach. This process consists of immersing textiles in an aqueous sulfonated polyaniline-carbon nanotube dispersion acting as a dye. Incorporating carbon nanotubes into textiles increased the conductivity by four orders of magnitude and doubled the capacitance compared to textiles dyed with sulfonated polyaniline. Textile durability and their applicability as strain gauges were also demonstrated. (c) 2007 Published by Elsevier B.V.