Self-Organized Frameworks on Textiles (SOFT): Conductive Fabrics for Simultaneous Sensing, Capture, and Filtration of Gases

Abstract

Wearable electronics have the potential to advance personalized health care, alleviate disability, enhance communication, and improve homeland security. Development of multifunctional electronic textiles (e-textiles) with the capacity to interact with the local environment is a promising strategy for achieving electronic transduction of physical and chemical information. This paper describes a simple and rapid approach for fabricating multifunctional e-textiles by integrating conductive two-dimensional (2D) metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) into fabrics through direct solution-phase self-assembly from simple molecular building blocks. These e-textiles display reliable conductivity, enhanced porosity, flexibility, and stability to washing. The functional utility of these integrated systems is demonstrated in the context of chemiresistive gas sensing, uptake, and filtration. The self-organized frameworks on textiles (SOFT)-devices detect and differentiate important gaseous analytes (NO, H₂S, and H₂O) at ppm levels and maintain their chemiresistive function in the presence of humidity (5000 ppm, 18% RH). With sub-ppm theoretical limits of detection (LOD for NO = 0.16 ppm and for H₂S = 0.23 ppm), these constitute the best textile-supported H₂S and NO detectors reported and the best MOF-based chemiresistive sensors for these analytes. In addition to sensing, these devices are capable of capturing and filtering analytes.