Novel ultrasonic-coating technology to design robust, highly sensitive and wearable textile sensors with conductive nanocelluloses

Abstract Flexible wearable devices with highly sensitive properties have raised enormous attention in human healthcare monitoring, soft robots and smart textiles. However, the current most researches only focus on the improvement of sensing sensitivity and the acquisition of mechanical performance, regularly ignoring the significance of wearing comfort and breathability. Herein, to overcome this challenge, we developed a fibrous sensor with three-dimensional reversible conductive networks for multiple signals monitoring via novel ultrasonic-coating technology. As a strain sensor, it possessed higher sensitivity (Gauge factor = 8.96) with excellent dynamic durability (5000 cycles) and mechanical performances than other conductive gel and film based sensors, which can meet the requirement of signal detection in various extreme environments. More surprisingly, the wearable textile sensors were assembled successfully by traditional sewing technology with different shapes. These textile sensors possessed outstanding real-time signal capture capability with temperature and full-range pH at various states such as stretching and twisting. Additionally, the textile sensors can detect different degrees of human movements such as large deformation finger bending and weak deformation swallowing, which paved the way for the development of flexible wearable devices.