MXene Functionalized, Highly Breathable and Sensitive Pressure Sensors with Multi‐Layered Porous Structure

Abstract

Breathable, flexible, and highly sensitive pressure sensors have drawn increasing attention due to their potential in wearable electronics for body‐motion monitoring, human‐machine interfaces, etc. However, current pressure sensors are usually assembled with polymer substrates or encapsulation layers, thus causing discomfort during wearing (i.e., low air/vapor permeability, mechanical mismatch) and restricting their applications. A breathable and flexible pressure sensor is reported with nonwoven fabrics as both the electrode (printed with MXene interdigitated electrode) and sensing (coated with MXene/silver nanowires) layers via a scalable screen‐printing approach. Benefiting from the multi‐layered porous structure, the sensor demonstrates good air permeability with high sensitivity (770.86–1434.89 kPa−1), a wide sensing range (0–100 kPa), fast response/recovery time (70/81 ms), and low detection limit (≈1 Pa). Particularly, this sensor can detect full‐scale human motion (i.e., small‐scale pulse beating and large‐scale walking/running) with high sensitivity, excellent cycling stability, and puncture resistance. Additionally, the sensing layer of the pressure sensor also displays superior sensitivity to humidity changes, which is verified by successfully monitoring human breathing and spoken words while wearing a sensor‐embedded mask. Given the outstanding features, this breathable sensor shows promise in the wearable electronic field for body health monitoring, sports activity detection, and disease diagnosis.

Sweat Gland-Inspired Skin-like Fabric with Directional Water Transport and Durability for Efficient Personal Moisture Management

“…As illustrated in Figure a, the hydrophobic coating was printed on the bare fabric in a one-step process. Screen printing is a well-established and effective technique for printing various coatings on the substrate . When the fabric was placed under the template, the paste was squeezed by the magnetic roller through the template, and the paste was selectively coated onto the fabric (Figure S1).…”

Materials-Driven Soft Wearable Bioelectronics for Connected Healthcare

“…Since layered MXene has strong binding forces between the metal and carbide or nitrogen, the monolayered MXene exhibits excellent mechanical performances. The properties of multiple layered MXene films are largely determined by the compositions, stacking sequence, and lateral dimensions of the MXene atoms, enabling a variety of structures and compositions by plenty of chemical or physical protocols to tune the device performance. − The mainstream wearable electronics for MXenes and their hybrids focus on flexible tactile/pressure sensors . An MXene/protein-based biomembrane was assembled for a wearable, breathable, degradable, and highly sensitive pressure sensor with coated and ink-printed silk fibroin nanofiber with MXene as the sensing layer and the electrode layer, respectively .…”

In Situ Grown Silver–Polymer Framework with Coordination Complexes for Functional Artificial Tissues

“…[9] Surface coating of conductive layers presents the potential delamination issue between the sensing and actuation units. [10] Primarily, using (ionic or electronic) conductive hydrogel composites with organic or inorganic fillers, improvements for soft and stretchable self-sensing actuators have been made. [8] However, issues of the ion leakage related unstable sensing and the poor filler dispersion deteriorated the mechanical deformation of the polymer matrix, still limiting the fabrication of achieving a superlative sensing-actuation integration within a single material system.…”