Mechanically robust textile-based strain and pressure multimodal sensors using metal nanowire/polymer conducting fibers

Summary: Recently, multifunctional textile-based sensory systems have attracted a lot of attention because of the growing demand for wearable electronics performing real-time monitoring of various body signals and movements. In particular, textile-based physical sensors often require multimodal sensing capabilities to accurately detect and identify multiple mixed stimuli simultaneously. Here, we demonstrate a textile-based strain/pressure multimodal sensor using high-k poly(vinylidene fluoride)-co-hexafluoropropylene ion-gel film and silver nanowire/poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):polystyrene sulfonate-coated conducting fibers. The multimodal sensors exhibited reliable strain and pressure-sensing characteristics for strain ranges up to 25% and pressures up to 50 kPa, respectively, with a relatively high strain gauge factor (up to 2.74) and pressure sensitivity (0.32 kPa−1). More importantly, the textile-based multimodal sensor was able to detect the strain and pressure independently, allowing facile discrimination of strain and pressure. Using this approach, we demonstrated a textile-based multimodal sensor that incorporates one strain sensor and two pressure sensors detecting multiple weights simultaneously.