Assembled wearable mechanical sensor prepared based on cotton fabric

Wearable flexible sensors based on fabrics possessing advantages of softness, flexibility and foldability have gained great attention nowadays. Here, a flexible assembled sensor is composed of one fabric coated with a certain circuit pattern by polyaniline (PANI) coating and another fabric with PANI/nano-silver coating. The sensor is delicately designed by face-to-face placing the conductive surfaces of two cotton fabrics to form an interpolation structure. The features of resultant sensor are confirmed by SEM, XRD and EDS tests. In addition, the dynamic response tests of the sensor show high sensitivity of 0.04-0.10 kPa(-1), high durability of 500 cycles, broad sensing range of about 0-20 kPa and quick response and recovery time of about 0.40 s, and the breaking strength is 25.00 MPa and the elongation at break is 19.00%. The sensor also can effectively monitor various forces and detect multiple human body movements. Thanks to the unique properties of the fabric and the superior performance of the sensor, we believe this mechanical sensor based on flexible fabrics will exhibit great potential for motion monitoring and vocal cord vibration recognition.