Electric heating behavior of flexible knitted fabrics comprising reduced graphene oxide, with emphasis on resistance temperature-sensitive behavior and decoupling of contact resistance

Electric fabric heaters have demonstrated potential applications in a wide range of fields for medical electrothermal, human healthcare and athletic rehabilitation. Whereas, little attention has been paid to the resistance variations and the interface of electric heaters. Here, this paper focuses on the resistance temperature-sensitive behavior and interfacial electricity of reduced graphene oxide (RGO)/polyester (PET) fabrics, which are obatained through a facile and scalable dip-coating method. When a current of 0.055 ampere (A) is applied, the RGO/PET fabric can achieve an equilibrium temperature about 89 °C in 20 s, with a maximum heating rate of 11.78 °C/s. Besides, the relative resistance changes of RGO/PET fabric are linearly related to the temperature. When the RGO/PET fabric reaches its steady-state temperature of 89 °C, the value of ΔR/R 0 drops by ∼30%, showing that the fabric is endowed with temperature sensitivity. These prominent results indicate that the RGO/PET fabric owns great promise in the field of wearable electric heaters. Notably, the contact resistance at the interface of RGO/PET fabric heater is investigated and the mechanism of the temperature in middle part of heater is higher than that of both ends is analyzed. This provides a qualitative decoupling analysis method for the study and analysis of interfacial electricity and electrothermal distribution of carbon materials.