Fast and facile graphene oxide grafting on hydrophobic polyamide fabric via electrophoretic deposition route

Fabric surface coating is deemed as the major route to fabricate functional fabrics, and interface stability is a critical factor affecting the performance of fabric. Here, electrophoretic deposition (EPD) is employed for fast and facile modification of hydrophobic polyamide fabric with graphene oxide (GO) nanosheets embedded in polymeric networks. For better grafting, polyethyleneimine is utilized to modify the surface of the fabric substrate, endowing more polar groups and resulting in reasonable interface properties of graphene oxide and fabric substrate. GO nanosheets are uniformly deposited on modified fabric via EPD method and then reduced by green hot-press processing. The modified fabric shows excellent electrical conductivity (electrical conductivity > 3.3 S/m), thermal conductivity (0.521 W/m·K), and UV protection performance (UPF > 500, UVA < 0.2%). Meanwhile, the contact angle test of fabric reveals that the addition of graphene significantly improved the hydrophobicity of the fabric.