One-Step-Printed, Highly Sensitive, Textile-Based, Tunable Performance Strain Sensors for Human Motion Detection

Wearable strain sensors have attracted a lot of interests due to their unlimited prospects in applications such as human motion detections, electronic skin, and human–computer interactions. However, the complex manufacturing methods are generally used to fabricate the strain sensors with wide sensing ranges and high sensitivity. Herein, a high-performance textile-based strain sensor (TSS) is fabricated by one-step screen-printing method via transferring the silver nanowires ink onto a stretchable textile. Through designing the screen plate with various patterns, the optimized TSSs with different sensing ranges and sensitivity can be achieved simultaneously. Among them, a straight line-structural TSS (with a width of 2 mm) exhibits a wide workable strain range of 120%, high gauge factor of 216, and superior durability (more than 2000 stretching/releasing cycles). As flexible wearable devices, these TSSs are used to monitor human joint motion, prefiguring the various applications in human health detection, soft robots, intelligent devices, etc.