E-textile gas sensors composed of molybdenum disulfide and reduced graphene oxide for high response and reliability

•This manuscript reports bendable and washable electronic textile (e-textile) gas sensors composed of molybdenum disulfide(MoS2) and reduced graphene oxides (RGOs) using commercially available cotton yarn and molecular glue through an electrostatic self-assembly.•The e-textile gas sensor possesses chemical durability to detergent washing treatments up to 100 times and mechanical stability under 1,000 bending tests as well as a high response to NO2 gas at room temperature.•Raman spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy, and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy confirm the wrapping of sensing materials composed of RGO and MoS2 on cotton yarn. The large accessible surface of the yarn, composed of several hundreds of fibrils, and a robust wrapping method using molecular glue and 2D sensing material are considered the origins of the high sensor performances, such as the gas response and stability.•Furthermore, the authors found that the combination of 2D sensing materials has a synergic effect on sensing NO2 with 48% response to 4.5ppm of NO2 gas Textiles with electronic functions (e-textiles) have been investigated due to a raise of internet-of-things (IoTs) and wearable electronics. The authors reported e-textile gas sensors based on reduced graphene oxides (RGOs) which were coated on the commercially available yarns treated with Bovine Serum Albumin (BSA) as a molecular glue. The e-textiles show sensitive responses to NO2 (25%@4.5ppm) and durabilities to washing and bending stresses. This study reports an ultrasensitive response of an e-textile to NO2 using combined sensing materials of transition metal disulfide (TMD) and RGO. The e-textile covered with MoS2 and RGO shows a 28% response to 0.45ppm of NO2 gas which is one of the most sensitive responses using RGOs as sensing materials.