Flexible and breathable MXene fabrics for highly sensitive human motion monitoring

The potential applications of wearable pressure sensors in portable electronics and artificial intelligence have generated tremendous research attention. However, developing pressure sensors with high sensitivity, rapid response, superb stability, and great dressing comfort remains a significant challenge. Herein, a flexible and breathable pressure sensor is developed on a cotton/spandex fabric via a simple sonication-assisted assembly of MXene and subsequent device packaging. Obtained MXene/cotton/spandex fabric (MCSF) pressure sensor achieves a high sensitivity of 0.1891 kPa-1, a low-pressure detection limit of 500 Pa, a wide working range of 0-100 kPa, rapid response/recovery times of 50/90 ms, as well as an outstanding durability of 5000 cycles. Furthermore, the inherent porosity of the fabric substrates allows free transmission of air and moisture from the skin, ensuring long-term wearing comfort of the sensor. More importantly, the MCSF sensor also demonstrates real-time monitoring capability for various human motion signals including wrist pulse, phonation, and joint motions. And a step further, an integrated sensory array is successfully applied for recognizing different tactile stimuli. It is anticipated that this fabric pressure sensor will find applications in wearable motion monitoring electronics and human-computer interaction devices.