Development of a qualitative and comparative method for the measurement of thermal behaviour of textiles containing graphene nanoplates

Abstract

After Geim and Novoselov’s discovery in 2004, the research interest in graphene applications in many different industrial sectors increased exponentially. The new material gained interest in the textile industry for its potential to improve comfort and performance in functional fabrics. Among others, electrical and thermal properties of textiles can be greatly improved by the addition of graphene. While instruments to measure electrical properties are widely available and easy to use for manufacturers, the improvement of thermal properties is more difficult to assess. Many instruments for the measurement of thermal conductivity are meant for bulk materials, and, while it’s possible to adapt some of them for use on fabrics (hot disk, HFM), these kinds of tests are not optimised for thin films and operate with heat flow perpendicular to the sample. The latter is an additional difficulty for finding proper testing equipment, since graphene can be distributed throughout the volume of the sample or only in a 2D layer on the surface of the fabric. The distribution changes the main direction of heat transport in the material under study. Therefore, the aim of this work is to develop two qualitative methods which will allow the evaluation of the thermal behaviour of different fabrics by comparison between a reference and a sample containing graphene. The first method, through plane, is used to evaluate the behaviour of fabrics containing graphene nanoplates in all their volume, while the second, in plane, is used to measure the samples with graphene in a 2D layer only on one surface.