Continuous Wet-Spinning Of Tpu Composite Fibers with Cnts Nanocomposites for Wearable Knitted Sensors

Abstract

The integration of conductive materials into elastomeric fibers as the wearable and knittable sensor have attained extensive attention recently. However, the intrinsic hydrophobicity of various conductive nanocomposites leads to the formation of aggregates in elastomeric fibers, which profoundly affects their mechanical deformation, not enabling their large-scale production. Herein, gallic acid@hexamethylene diamine (GAHD)-decorated carbon nanotubes-2,2-dihydroxymethylpropionic acid (CNTs-DMPA) @thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU)@MXene@poly (3, 4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT)@AgNPs (GCTMP-Ag) composite fibers are fabricated via a scalable wet-spinning technique. The reasonable design of CNTs nanocomposites enables GCTMP-Ag composite fibers to exhibit superior electrical properties with an excellent sensing performance (gauge factor =15257.25), with rapid response (240 ms) within a large deformation range (1-900%) and outstanding electrical transport. Moreover, they are successfully knitted on the knitting machine to monitor comprehensive human-body movements. More significantly, these knitted fabrics fabricated present remarkable stability under various deformations, exceptional electromagnetic interference shielding, and wonderful durability over 6000 cycles (at 160 % strain).

Keywords: wet-spinning process, knitted strain sensors, TPU composite fibers, CNTs nanocomposites