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Robust, Breathable and Flexible Smart Textiles as Multifunctional Sensor and Heater for Personal Health Management

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Abstract

Smart textiles with high sensitivity and rapid response for various external stimuli have gained tremendous attentions in human healthcare monitoring, personal heat management, and wearable electronics. However, the current smart textiles only acquire desired signal passively, regularly lacking subsequent on-demand therapy actively. Herein, a robust, breathable, and flexible smart textiles as multi-function sensor and wearable heater for human health monitoring and gentle thermotherapy in real time is constructed. The composite fiber as strain sensor (CFY@PU) was fabricated via warping carbon fiber yarns (CFY) onto polyurethane fibers (PU), which endowed composite fiber with high conductivity, excellent sensitivity (GF = 76.2), and fantastic dynamic durability (7500 cycles) in strain sensing. In addition, CFY@PU can detect various degrees of human movements such as elbow bending, swallowing and pulse, which can provide effective information for disease diagnosis. More surprisingly, weaving CFY@PU into a fabric can assemble highly sensitive pressure sensor for remote communication and information encryption. Warping CFY onto Kevlar would obtain temperature-sensitive composite fiber (CFY@Kevlar) as temperature sensor and wearable heater for on-demand thermotherapy, which provided unique opportunities in designing smart textiles with ultrahigh sensitivity, rapid response, and great dynamic durability.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by Outstanding Youth Project of Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation (LR22E030002), the Key Research and Development Program of Zhejiang Province (2022C01049), Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Key Foundation of China (LZ20E030003), National Natural Science Foundation of China (52273095).

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Author notes

  1. Dewen Xu and Zhaofeng Ouyang have contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Intelligent Textile and Flexible Interconnection of Zhejiang Province, Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, Xiasha Higher Education Park Avenue 2 No.928, Hangzhou, 310018, China

    Dewen Xu, Zhaofeng Ouyang, Yanjuan Dong, Hou-Yong Yu, Shuang Zheng & Shenghong Li

  2. Frontiers Science Center for Transformative Molecules, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200240, China

    Zhaofeng Ouyang

  3. Department of Chemical Engineering, Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo, ON, N2L 3G1, Canada

    Hou-Yong Yu & Kam Chiu Tam

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  1. Dewen Xu
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Correspondence to Hou-Yong Yu.

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Xu, D., Ouyang, Z., Dong, Y. et al. Robust, Breathable and Flexible Smart Textiles as Multifunctional Sensor and Heater for Personal Health Management. Adv. Fiber Mater. 5, 282–295 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42765-022-00221-z

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