A Review on PVDF Nanofibers in Textiles for Flexible Piezoelectric Sensors

Textiles are turning into a suitable next-generation sensing platform because of their good breathability, softness, and structural elasticity. Besides, research on self-powered piezoelectric sensors is a hot topic in wearable applications; they can perform long-term sensing and monitoring. Therefore, this paper mainly reviews the development progress of PVDF-based textiles on flexible piezoelectric sensors. In this paper, we first introduce the principle of the piezoelectric effect and the classification of piezoelectric materials; then we summarize the structure and characteristics of nanofiber mat-based, yarn-based, and fabric-based flexible piezoelectric sensors and the approaches that are employed to fabricate PVDF-based textile piezoelectric sensors such as melt spinning, electrospinning, and stretch forming processes, and so on. At last, we review their applicability in the application of electronic skin, human-computer interaction, healthcare, and human movement monitoring and demonstrate the facing difficulties and the future research directions of PVDF-based textile flexible sensors.

Automated summary

Textiles are becoming an ideal platform for next-generation sensing due to their breathability, softness, and structural elasticity. This paper mainly reviews the development of PVDF-based textiles in flexible piezoelectric sensors, which are widely used in wearable applications for long-term sensing and monitoring.