Foldable and washable fully textile-based pressure sensor

Abstract

Smart textiles have wide applications in various sensing systems since they have the advantage of maintaining the inherent properties of textile such as light weight, flexibility, comfort, and breathability. Therefore, textile-based pressure sensors, one of the smart textiles, have attracted considerable interest in wearable electronics and homecare systems. In this study, to construct a textile-based pressure sensor, a poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT) thin film was fabricated on a polyethylene terephthalate microfiber fabric by vapor phase polymerization with various concentrations of the oxidant, FeCl 3 . The PEDOT conductive textile showed a change in conductivity depending on the applied pressure. We confirmed the excellent washing and physical durability of the sensor from the stable electrical properties of the PEDOT conductive textile after washing and repeated folding tests. Furthermore, a fully textile-based pressure sensor was successfully fabricated using the highly durable PEDOT, which could simultaneously measure both static and dynamic pressures even during physical deformation, thus suggesting great potential in smart textiles, especially textile-based homecare systems.

Single-Layer Pressure Textile Sensors with Woven Conductive Yarn Circuit

“…However, this method will also change the sensitivity of the sensors, so more experiments are needed in future work. In a comparison overview (Figure 8b), our sensors were found to be thinner than those of other studies [33][34][35][36][37][38], though they were a little bit thicker than those of [29] because of the laminating layers. A thin sensor will fit many wearable devices.…”

Towards the Functional Ageing of Electrically Conductive and Sensing Textiles: A Review

“…A textile capacity pressure sensor was prepared from a PEDOT-coated nylon/polyester microfibre fabric. The sensor was folded for 1000 cycles and tested with a reference weight in between [ 107 ].…”

Electronic textiles for energy, sensing, and communication

“…Whereas earlier e-textile were designed based on simply attaching conventional electronic components attached onto clothing, recent advances in material science and electronics have enabled e-textiles that are able to perform a wide variety of electronic functionalities while being flexible and breathable. Such e-textiles have gained significant attention both in the industry and academia and have been demonstrated for a broad range of applications, including Internet of things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI) ( Matijevich et al., 2020 ), body motion tracking ( Chun et al., 2018 ; Kim et al., 2019b ), gaming( Zhou et al., 2018 ), pressure mapping ( Lim et al., 2020 ), rehabilitation, healthcare ( Fan et al., 2020 ; Li et al., 2018a ; Teferra et al., 2019 ), smart wearables ( Carneiro et al., 2020 ; Fernández-Caramés and Fraga-Lamas, 2018 ; Gong et al., 2019 ), and smart garments ( Castano and Flatau, 2014 ; Ou et al., 2019 ; Yin et al., 2018b ).…”