Efficiently Regulating the Electrical Properties of Flexible Fabric‐Based Cu₃(BTC)₂ Thin Film by Introducing Various Guest Molecules

Abstract Recently, the flexibility of 2D conductive metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) is an important precondition for manufacturing high‐performance smart electronic devices. Preparation of MOFs thin film has drawn much attention, and increasingly more MOF thin films have been deposited on different rigid substrates like glass, silicon, and metal electrodes. However, they do not meet the requirements for flexible materials, such as wearable electronic devices. Here, the fabric‐based composites (the integration of MOFs and fabric materials) can solve this problem. Insulating polyester fabric is chosen as a flexible substrate and atom layer deposition (ALD) and the layer‐by‐layer (LBL) method (also called the liquid phase epitaxy method) are combined to synthesize Cu₃(BTC)₂ thin film. 7,7,8,8‐tetracyanoquinodimethane (TCNQ) and polypyrrole (PPy) are chosen to improve the conductivity of the MOF thin films. The conductivity of Cu₃(BTC)₂ thin film is improved by more than four orders of magnitude compared to that of the original sample. This research shows that the large‐area lightweight fabric‐based Cu₃(BTC)₂ thin films, which possess excellent uniformity and flexibility and controllable thickness, can be prepared at room temperature; this allows MOFs to be applied in more areas, such as large‐area electronic devices and smart wearable sensing equipment.