Impact of Fabric Properties on Textile Pressure Sensors Performance

Abstract

In recent years, wearable technologies have attracted great attention in physical and chemical sensing applications. Wearable pressure sensors with high sensitivity in low pressure range (<10 kPa) allow touch detection for human-computer interaction and the development of artificial hands for handling objects. Conversely, pressure sensors that perform in a high pressure range (up to 100 kPa), can be used to monitor the foot pressure distribution, the hand stress during movements of heavy weights or to evaluate the cyclist’s pressure pattern on a bicycle saddle. Recently, we developed a fully textile pressure sensor based on a conductive polymer, with simple fabrication and scalable features. In this paper, we intend to provide an extensive description on how the mechanical properties of several fabrics and different piezoresistive ink formulation may have an impact in the sensor’s response during a dynamic operation mode. These results highlight the complexity of the system due to the presence of various parameters such as the fabric used, the conductive polymer solution, the operation mode and the desired pressure range. Furthermore, this work can lead to a protocol for new improvements and optimizations useful for adapting textile pressure sensors to a large variety of applications.

Textile sensors platform for the selective and simultaneous detection of chloride ion and pH in sweat

“…On one hand, wearable physical sensors exhibit a high readiness level and include strain sensors to monitor physical movement 8 , motion 9 , 10 , heartbeat 11 or respiratory rate evaluation 12 and pressure sensors based on memory systems 13 , textile devices 14 , 15 or skin-based architectures 16 . Moreover, bio-potential sensitive sensors can record skin potential that allows, for example, electrocardiograms 17 – 19 and electromyography 20 .…”

Flexible Sensors Based on Conductive Polymers

“…An important aspect of the sensors when used for health and medical applications is biocompatibility [32,33]. In medicine, flexible sensors can be used for blood pressure measurements, [34] electrocardiographic (ECG) monitoring, [35] electromyography (sEMG) [36] and non-invasive exhaled breath analysis [37,38]. In environmental applications, they are used for pressure and humidity measurements [39], gas sensing [40][41][42][43][44], or temperature measurements [45].…”

Textile Chemical Sensors Based on Conductive Polymers for the Analysis of Sweat

“…CPs’ success is demonstrated by their large use in the fabrication of textile appliances such as batteries, solar cells, energy harvesting devices and sensors. Gadgets based on smart textiles have been developed for the physical sensing of bio-potentials (such as electrocardiogram, electromyogram, electroencephalogram) [ 47 , 48 ], pressure [ 49 ] and temperature [ 50 ]. In addition, CPs were employed for the fabrication of textile gas sensors based on chemiresistor transduction [ 51 , 52 , 53 ].…”