Researchers from Korea's Incheon National University developed a new way to make conductive, flexible, and durable textiles (fabrics) wrapped with reduced graphene oxide (RGO). They report that those materials are useful to make conductive wires or functional fabrics in wearable electronics and more.
The main breakthrough is the choice of bovine serum albumin (BSA) - an amphiphilic protein that can be attached to organic and inorganic materials through hydrophobic and hydrophilic interactions - basically this is molecular "glue" that helps with graphene-oxide adsorption into any textile. The researchers fabricated those electrostatic self-assembly of BSA molecules onto all sorts of textiles (nylon yarns, cotton yarns, etc.) and then used a low-temperature chemical reduction.
