Highly conductive, washable and super-hydrophobic wearable carbon nanotubes e-textile for vacuum pressure sensors

Abstract

Electronic textiles (e-textiles) have shown promise applications in wearable electronics and multifunctional smart clothes due to the combination of the advanced electronic functions, ultra-lightweight and flexibility. In this work, we report the functionalized conductive, sensitive, wearable and washable vacuum pressure sensor based on carbon nanotubes (CNTs) e-textile with unique nanostructures growth on the non-woven fabric (NWF) by using the novel and facile nano-soldering method. The electronic resistance of the CNTs e-textile sensor is sensitive to vacuum pressure and show the good linearity, the high sensitivity with a maximum sensitivity of 3.06, the wide measurement ranges from 7.3×10−5 to 1.0 ×103 mbar, and low power consumption of 0.21 mW. And the pressure sensitive mechanism is discussed, and the oxygen chemisorption and energy band were used to reasonably explained it. Moreover, the conductive CNTs e-textile sensors show good repeatability, washability, durability and super-hydrophobic performance, and it can be used for smart clothes, flexible sensors by monitoring vacuum pressures in real time.