Facile fabrication of highly durable superhydrophobic strain sensors for subtle human motion detection

Endowing strain sensors with superhydrophobicity is of great importance to guarantee their long-term service under harsh environments (such as wet, acid, alkali and salt atmospheres), whereas, the devel-opment of superhydrophobic strain sensors remains a great challenge. Herein, we realized a superhy-drophobic and highly sensitive sensor for subtle human motion detection by designing a superhydropho-bic and electrically conductive coating on cotton textile, via a facile drop-coating method. The resultant strain sensor showed a large water contact angle of 161.3 degrees and a low sliding angle of 3.8 degrees The super-hydrophobic characteristics can keep almost unchanged even after undergoing 10 0 0 peeling cycles, 10 0 0 stretching-release cycles, and 10 0 0 bending-releasing cycles, revealing its excellent mechanical robust-ness. High sensitivity with the maximum gage factor of 169 was achieved for the strain sensor under a small strain of 0-10%, and the sensing performance also showed well durability. Moreover, our sen-sor can effectively detect various subtle human physiological signals and body motions even under harsh conditions. These admirable features make the sensor promising applications in wearable electronics, per-sonalized health monitoring, sound recognition, and so on. (c) 2021 Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of Chinese Society for Metals.

Automated summary

In this study, a superhydrophobic and highly sensitive strain sensor was developed by designing a superhydrophobic and electrically conductive coating on cotton textile. The sensor showed excellent mechanical robustness and durability, and achieved high sensitivity for detecting subtle human motion even under harsh conditions.