Improving electrical performances of wool textiles: Synthesis of conducting polypyrrole on the fibre surface

Antistatic treatments lower the electrical resistivity of textiles and facilitate charge dissipation avoiding high potential electrical discharges. Moreover, low surface resistivity gives textiles electro-conducting, soil release, thermal and electromagnetic shielding properties. A new way of producing electrically conducting textiles consists of treatments with organic conducting polymers. Unfortunately, conducting polymers have a low level of processability because of their poor mechanical and physical properties. These problems have been overcome by simple in situ depositions of conducting polymers on different substrates in order to produce composite materials with good mechanical properties. Polypyrrole (PPy) is one of the most promising candidates because it exhibits high conductivity and good environmental stability. In situ PPy synthesis on wool and on other animal fibers is presented in this work. A preliminary oxidative treatment (e.g. shrink-proofing, bleaching or depigmentation) improves the electrical properties of the resulting conductive composite textiles significantly.