Abstract
Abstract Development of stretchable wearable devices requires essential materials with high level of mechanical and electrical properties as well as scalability. Recently, silicone rubber-based elastic polymers with incorporated conductive fillers (metal particles, carbon nanomaterials, etc.) have been shown to the most promising materials for enabling both high electrical performance and stretchability, but the technology to make materials in scalable fabrication is still lacking. Here, we propose a facile method for fabricating a wearable device by directly coating essential electrical material on fabrics. The optimized material is implemented by the noncovalent association of multiwalled carbon nanotube (MWCNT), carbon black (CB), and silicon rubber (SR). The e-textile sensor has the highest gauge factor (GF) up to 34.38 when subjected to 40% strain for 5,000 cycles, without any degradation. In particular, the fabric sensor is fully operational even after being immersed in water for 10 days or stirred at room temperature for 8 hours. Our study provides a general platform for incorporating other stretchable elastic materials, enabling the future development of the smart clothing manufacturing.
Highlights
Development of stretchable wearable devices requires essential materials with high level of mechanical and electrical properties as well as scalability
Few have systematically evaluated the applications of multiwalled carbon nanotube (MWCNT)/carbon black (CB) composites on fabrics [18,19,20]
The other studies have shown that the tensile and tear strength of the rubber composites containing MWCNTs were lower than those of the rubber filled with CB, which might be due to MWCNTs agglomerates in rubber matrix [40]
Summary
Realizing large-scale e-textiles and mass production of those e-textiles by using this technique are difficult due to some technical issues, such as its potential incompatibility with the processes and equipment currently used in the textile industry [26,27,28] Another way is the upbottom route, in which the conductive material is evenly covered on the fabric by printing, or coating, to avoid the process of preparing the fabric by the bottom-up route. In this study, a facile and large area–compatible deposition technique, namely, blade coating, was employed to produce a nanocomposite electrode on substrates This technology has been used in many fields due to its reliability, accuracy, and film formation stability, such as organic transistors, solar cells, and electrochromic devices [32,33,34,35,36]. By tracking the change in resistance during cyclic bending, the optimal electrode ratio was determined to obtain the best performance
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