Highly-sensitive wearable pressure sensor based on AgNWs/MXene/non-woven fabric

Abstract

Nowadays, wearable medical devices are getting more and more public attention. As a continuous monitoring device in wearable medical devices, flexible pressure sensors have also attracted much attention in the field of wearable electronics. High sensitivity and long-term durability in a wide linear range are key requirements for making reliable and flexible wearable pressure sensors. Here, a comfortable, flexible, environmentally friendly and wearable non-woven fabric is proposed as a substrate for the pressure sensor. Conductive AgNWs/MXene/non-woven fabric is prepared by a simple dip-coating technique and then an overall sandwich structure is formed between two layers of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) film and an Interdigitated Array of Electrodes (IDE). The viscose fibres in nonwovens are rich in hydroxyl groups and their hydrophilicity is more conducive to the attachment of conductive MXene nanosheets to the entangled fibre network of nonwovens. The synergistic effect between Ti3C2Tx and AgNWs, and the unique intercalation structure can build a more effective conductive network. The pressure sensor based on AgNWs/MXene/non-woven fabric has a fibrous entanglement structure and a special sandwich structure of the sensor with high sensitivity (0.25–5 kPa pressure range: 14.28 kPa−1), and have a wide sensing range (0.25–400 kPa), rapid response and recovery times (60 ms/120 ms), excellent stability, and long term durability for use in human motion detection applications. In addition, the wearable pressure sensors was used to detect and discriminate between different signals related to human health, including monitoring human movement and breathing, and 4 × 4 arrays was used to detect stress distribution signals. These results suggest that the sensor can be potentially applied in mobile medical monitoring devices, showing broad potential in a new generation of wearable electronic devices.