Preparation of ultra-conductive bamboo cellulose fiber via a facile pretreatment

Abstract The rise of smart textiles has increased the demand for conductive fibers and the common method to realize the conductivity of fibers is to add a layer of nano metal particles via electroless plating process. However, this conventional method often requires redundant pretreatment steps and chemical regents, which hinders the large-scale production of such conductive fibers. Here, we propose a facile one-step alkaline pretreatment to prepare ultra-conductive bamboo cellulose fibers (BCFs) via in-situ reduction of silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs). The Ag-coated BCF has a conductivity of 31800 S m-1 and a tensile strength 492 MPa. It also has outstanding flexibility, excellent mechanical stability and washing resistance, maintaining over 96% conductivity after 1000 bending cycles and over 96% Ag retention after 50 washing times. More importantly, this alkaline pretreatment method is suitable for various biomass materials such as wood fibers, and can realize the selective conductivity of materials. This facile, green and universal pretreatment method for preparing conductive biomass fibers is expected to achieve large-scale production and be widely used in the fabrication of smart textiles.