Recently, wearable strain sensors have increasingly attracted much attention due to their potential applications in human motion detection and personal health monitoring. To date, it is still a challenge to fabricate a flexible strain sensor with both comfort and high performance. In this study, we dip the commercially available spandex/polyamide fabric into carbonic pen ink to prepare a textile strain sensor with good skin affinity. The textile strain sensor exhibits a high gauge factor (∼62.9) and an excellent linearity (R2 ∼ 0.99) in the strain range of 0-30%. Both before and after washing, the sensor exhibits high stability in more than 5000 cycles. Owing to the facile integration of the ink-decorated fabric on clothes, the sensor can be conveniently attached to the human body to monitor human motions, thus showing great potential in practical applications.
Keywords: carbonic ink; dip-coating; mass production; spandex/polyamide fabric; textile strain sensor.