Preparation And Application Of Water Dispersible Graphene In Medical Textiles

Graphene has received great attention in academic fields for its excellentelectronic characteristics, huge surface area, and extraordinary mechanical properties.With its high carrier mobility, graphene has exceptional and stable electron transport, theefficiency of which is far greater than the metal conductor or semiconductor. The highelectrical conductivity of graphene makes it quite suitable as an antistatic agent andexhibits good antistatic performance with a very small amount. Meanwhile, graphene isof good biocompatibility and has been applied in biosensors in medical fields. However,literatures about graphene which was incorporated into the medical textile fields haverarely been reported yet. In this paper, graphene was used in the treatment of thebiological medical polypropylene spunlaid-meltblowing-spunlaid (SMS) nonwovens onthe basis of the preparation of the water dispersible graphene and the improvement of theconcentration of the graphene solution. By the application of graphene, which exhibitedoutstanding electrical conductivity, the treated SMS nonwovens could quickly passcharge into the surrounding environment, in which case, the treated textile fabric thenachieved the antistatic performance, thus widening application for graphene inmedical textiles.In this paper, glucose was used as a biological green reducing agent in the synthesisof water dispersible graphene, while using exfoliated graphite oxide (GO) as precursorwith the modified Hummers method. Then the SMS nonwovens were treated with the resulted graphene solution via pad-dry-cure process. In this case, graphene was attachedto the SMS nonwovens. Then, the dispersion of reduced GO（R-GO） suspension wasgreatly increased by adding the stabilizing agent into the GO solution. Meanwhile, thestabilizing agent could also largely improve the concentration of the graphene solution.Also, the antistatic performance and water resistance properties were also studied. Finally,water-borne adhesive was added into the prepared graphene suspension, after which, theresulted solutions were used to treat the SMS nonwovens. The antistatic durability of thetreated nonwovens was studied to see whether the water-borne adhesive had anyinfluences on the nonwovens. The main conclusions of research are as follows:1)The modified Hummers method was applied in the preparation of the GO, andglucose could successfully reduce the GO, obtaining the graphene suspension. Theconcentration of the resulted graphene solution could be no larger than0.1mg/ml.Compared with the original SMS nonwovens which were totally non-antistatic textilefabric at all, when treated with the graphene solution, the nonwovens could be judged asthe high A-level antistatic materials, exhibiting outstanding antistatic performance and5times of water resistance.2)After sodium dodecyl sulfate(SDS) was added into the GO suspension, thepreparation of the graphene was successfully, and the concentration of the resultedgraphene suspension increased to4mg/ml from the0.1mg/ml. After diluting thehighly concentrated solutions, the SMS nonwovens treated with0.2mg/ml of graphenesuspension could be judged as the A-level antistatic materials according to the nationalstandard, but having a poor water resistance.3)While incorporating the water-borne polyacrylate(PA) into the SDS-graphenesuspension, the SMS nonwovens treated with the0.3mg/ml of the resultedPA-SDS-graphene solution could reach the standard of the A-level antistatic materials.Meanwhile, the treated SMS nonwovens could be regarded as A-level antistatic materialsafter washing5times, and identified as B-level antistatic materials after10times of washing, but also exhibiting the antistatic property of C-level antistatic materials after15times of washing. But it had poor antistatic property when more than15times ofwashing.