Conductive Hierarchical Hairy Fibers for Highly Sensitive, Stretchable, and Water-Resistant Multimodal Gesture-Distinguishable Sensor, VR Applications

Conductive fibers, which are highly adaptable to the morphologies of the human body, are attractive for the development of wearable systems, smart clothing, and textronics to detect various biological signals and human motions. A fiber-based conductive sensor interconnected with hierarchical microhairy architectures, exhibiting remarkable stretchability (<200%) and sensitivity for various stimuli (pressure, stretching, and bending), is developed. For distinguishability of multiple gestures, two hierarchical hairy conductive fibers are twisted to fabricate a fiber-type sensor, which monitors distinct waveforms of electrical signals retrieved from pressure, stretching, and bending. This sensor is highly robust under repeated appliances of external stimuli over multiple cyclic tests of various modes (<2200 cycles for each stimulus). Upon formation of a self-assembled monolayer, it exhibits stable performance even under wet conditions. For practical applications, this sensor can be weaved into a smart glove to demonstrate a pressure and gesture-discernible wearable controller for virtual reality (VR) interface, shedding light on advances in wearable electronics with medical and healthcare functionalities and VR systems.