High performance fully-printed strain-sensing e-textile for human posture recognition

Abstract

Developing strain-sensing electronic textiles (e-textiles) that combine the functionality of stretchable strain sensors with the wearing comfort of textiles is an important development direction for wearable electronics. However, achieving low-cost and high-volume fabrication of strain-sensing e-textiles with both a wide strain working range and high sensitivity remains a huge challenge. Herein, we report high-performance printed strain-sensing e-textiles by designing the composite conductive ink from the perspective of optimizing polymer binders. The composite conductive inks based on different polymer binders present different rheological properties, volume shrinkage, and mechanical properties, which further affect the sensing performance of printed strain-sensing e-textiles. Compared with other four composite conductive inks, the carbon blacks/high elastic transparent glue-based printed strain-sensing e-textile with microcrack structure exhibits higher sensitivity (120.6 at a strain range of 0–100%) over a wide strain working range (150%), while also exhibiting low detection limits (0.1%) and outstanding dynamic stability (10000 cycles). On this basis, the demonstration of smart clothing integrated with 9 printed strain-sensing elements in human body posture recognition and monitoring proves its application prospects in human–machine interaction and virtual reality. This work opens a new research idea for constructing high-performance strain-sensing e-textiles.