A facile way of fabricating a flexible and conductive cotton fabric

There is an increasing interest in the area of conductive textiles, also called e-textiles, in both the scientific and industrial fields. Herein, we have successfully prepared a conductive textile via electroless deposition onto cotton textiles by using a three-step treatment process. The cotton textiles are first dipped in P4VP-SU8 solution to form a uniform layer for the subsequent absorption of silver ions. Then, the cotton textiles are immersed in silver nitrate solution in preparation for the next step electroless deposition. The parameters like P4VP concentration and ELD conditions are studied to optimize the whole process. Compared to other methods, the whole fabrication process is efficient, facile and time-saving. The as-made cotton fabric sample showed sheet resistance as low as 0.05 Ω sq^-1, which makes this method a promising candidate for applications in the fabrication of functional textile-based wearable devices.