A Flexible and Stretchable MXene/Waterborne Polyurethane Composite-Coated Fiber Strain Sensor for Wearable Motion and Healthcare Monitoring

Abstract

Fiber-based flexible sensors have promising application potential in human motion and healthcare monitoring, owing to their merits of being lightweight, flexible, and easy to process. Now, high-performance elastic fiber-based strain sensors with high sensitivity, a large working range, and excellent durability are in great demand. Herein, we have easily and quickly prepared a highly sensitive and durable fiber-based strain sensor by dip coating a highly stretchable polyurethane (PU) elastic fiber in an MXene/waterborne polyurethane (WPU) dispersion solution. Benefiting from the electrostatic repulsion force between the negatively charged WPU and MXene sheets in the mixed solution, very homogeneous and stable MXene/WPU dispersion was successfully obtained, and the interconnected conducting networks were correspondingly formed in a coated MXene/WPU shell layer, which makes the as-prepared strain sensor exhibit a gauge factor of over 960, a large sensing range of over 90%, and a detection limit as low as 0.5% strain. As elastic fiber and mixed solution have the same polymer constitute, and tight bonding of the MXene/WPU conductive composite on PU fibers was achieved, enabling the as-prepared strain sensor to endure over 2500 stretching–releasing cycles and thus show good durability. Full-scale human motion detection was also performed by the strain sensor, and a body posture monitoring, analysis, and correction prototype system were developed via embedding the fiber-based strain sensors into sweaters, strongly indicating great application prospects in exercise, sports, and healthcare.