Silk Sericin As a Green Adhesive to Fabricate a Textile Strain Sensor with Excellent Electromagnetic Shielding Performance

Although flexible textile-based electronics and lightweight electromagnetic shielding materials have attracted increasing attention due to their wide application, the seamless integration of textile sensors and electromagnetic shielding materials is still a challenge. Herein, we designed a simple, cost-effective, and environmentally friendly method to fabricate nickel-plated acetate fabrics coated with carbon nanotubes, using silk sericin to disperse carbon nanotubes in water and adsorb abundant nickel ions easily on the surface of carbon nanotubes via hydroxyl groups without other additives. The as-prepared composites exhibited excellent conductivity and electromagnetic interference (EMI) shield effectiveness (>30 dB) at X-band with around 0.8 mm thickness. The low-loading carbon nanotubes could offer more loss mechanism and had a positive effect upon EMI. The conductive textiles had higher tensile strength and negative relative resistance changes in strain, and had a great potential as wearable sensors in response to finger folding and wrist bending. Silk sericin as a green adhesive and dispersant provides an alternative strategy to large-scale produce multifunctional conductive wearable textiles for applications in EMI shielding and/or human-machine interaction.