Wearable Strain Sensors with Aligned Macro Carbon Cracks Using a Two-Dimensional Triaxial-Braided Fabric Structure...

Area of Science:

• Materials Science
• Biomedical Engineering
• Textile Engineering

Background:

• Wearable sensors are crucial for health monitoring, detecting human motion and vital signals.
• Developing strain sensors with high performance and wearability remains a significant challenge.
• Existing sensors often lack the required sensitivity, durability, or comfort for continuous use.

Purpose of the Study:

• To fabricate a highly sensitive and durable textile-based strain sensor for wearable applications.
• To investigate the effect of fabric structure and fabrication process on sensor performance.
• To demonstrate the sensor's capability in monitoring both large-strain human motions and subtle biosignals.

Main Methods:

• Fabrication of a textile strain sensor using a simple dip-coating process of 2D triaxial-braided fabric with carbon ink.
• Utilizing a prestraining process to create aligned macro cracks on the fabric surface.
• Characterization of the sensor's performance, including sensitivity, durability, washability, hysteresis, and response time.

Main Results:

• The fabricated textile strain sensor demonstrated excellent skin affinity and wearability.
• The aligned macro cracks and high-density braided fabric structure significantly enhanced sensor sensitivity (gauge factor: 128).
• The optimized sensor exhibited high durability (5000 cycles), washability, low hysteresis, and a fast response time (90 ms).

Conclusions:

• The developed textile strain sensor meets the demanding requirements for wearable health monitoring.
• The simple fabrication method and enhanced performance make it a promising candidate for practical applications.
• This sensor technology can effectively monitor diverse human physiological signals, from large body movements to subtle biosignals.