Highly resilient and responsive fabric strain sensors: Their effective integration into textiles and wireless communication for wearable applications

Wearable technology is shaping our future how human will interface with machines for a wide range of applications from healthcare monitoring to virtual reality applications. In this regard, several sensing devices have been developed especially strain gauges that monitor various human body movements. Strain gauges for wearable applications require conformity, flexibility, resilience, stretchability, portability, and high responsiveness. This study reports extrinsically developed conductive textiles by realizing in-situ polymerization of polyaniline across warp knitted 4-way stretch textiles enveloped in waterborne polyurethane coatings. As developed textiles not only acquire the required properties but also high sensitivity over a wide range of strain variations. As developed sensing structures exhibited remarkable mechanical robustness, long cycles life under varied strains and reproducible piezoresistive behavior both for subtle and blatant body movements. These breathable textile structures can be integrated into routine clothing using various integration techniques. The wash fastness, perspiration fastness and other textile related properties have been evaluated for practical usage. To demonstrate its real-time applications, a PCB and several body part artifacts have been designed such as arm sleeve, hand glove and knee cover with sensing elements for tracking, recording and identification of various motions and gestures. Owing to superior all-round performance of as developed polyaniline interpenetrated warp knitted textiles, these can be potential candidate for wearable sensing applications.