Light-colored conductive fabric coatings using uniform ATO@TiO 2 whiskers

In this work, one-dimensional conductive TiO2 whiskers coated with antimony-doped tin oxide (ATO@TiO2) were prepared with a method of hydrothermal coprecipitation. Specially, sodium hexametaphosphate (SHMP) was used as an interfacial reactor to form sufficient active groups on the surface of TiO2 whiskers, which not only increased the reaction sites, but also formed the electric double-layer structure to promote the dispersion of TiO2 whiskers in aqueous solution. Additionally, four kinds of ATO@TiO2 nanomaterials with different appearances were introduced into waterborne polyurethane (WPU) emulsion to prepare the conductive paint for the surface coating of polyester fabrics. During the process of curing reaction, ATO@TiO2 whiskers are located in the coating mold to organize a conductive network in the form of a rod-to-rod connection. Compared with particle-type ATO@TiO2, the percolation threshold was drastically decreased from 45 to 7.5 wt%, meanwhile, this conductive paint shows excellent covering performance and the whiteness is up to 83.