Multifunctional, Light-Weight Wearable Sensor Based on 3D Porous Polyurethane Sponge Coated with MXene and Carbon Nanotubes Composites

With the rapid development of wearable electronics, a resistive sensor with high performance and multifunctional monitoring abilities turns out to be a great challenge for industrial application fields. Herein, a wearable 3D porous polyurethane (PU) sponge sensor coated with MXene and carbon nanotubes (CNTs) composites is self-assembled through a simple ultrasonic dip-coating process. The alternate assembly and the synergistic effect of MXene and CNTs contribute to a tough and complete 1D/2D conductive network, which significantly extends the measurement ability of the proposed MXene/CNTs@PU sensor from a wide-compressive strain range (-80%) to a wide-stretching strain range (60%). Moreover, benefit from this unique tough multidimensional MXene/CNTs structure, the presented sensor is endowed with excellent electrical response and stability during the long-term reproducibility test over 5000 cycles. This study also demonstrates the versatile applications (stretching and compression) of the MXene/CNTs@PU sensor, such as detecting subtle expressions, vocal vibrations, body actions of human motions, and lighting light emitting diode lamps. Thus, this advanced sensor indicates great potential for emerging applications in human-machine interaction, healthcare, and wearable devices.

Automated summary

The study presents a wearable 3D porous polyurethane sponge sensor coated with MXene and carbon nanotubes composites, demonstrating excellent measurement abilities and electrical response/stability. This advanced sensor shows great potential for versatile applications in human-machine interaction, healthcare, and wearable devices.