Breathable Kirigami-Shaped Ionotronic e-Textile with Touch/Strain Sensing for Friendly Epidermal Electronics

Abstract

Flexible ionotronic devices have great potential to revolutionize epidermal electronics. However, the lack of breathability in most ionotronic devices is a significance barrier to practical application. Herein, a breathable kirigami-shaped ionotronic e-textile with two functions of sensing (touch and strain) is designed, by integrating silk fabric and kirigami-shaped ionic hydrogel. The kirigami-shaped ionic hydrogel, combined with fluffy silk fabric, allows the ionotronic e-textile to achieve excellent breathability and comfortability. Furthermore, the fabricated ionotronic e-textile can precisely perform the function of touch sensing and strain perception. For touch-sensing, the ionotronic e-textile can detect the position of finger touching point with a fast response time (3 ms) based on the interruption of the ion field. For strain sensing, large workable strain range (> 100%), inconspicuous drift (< 0.78%) and long-term stability (> 10,000 cycles) is demonstrated. On the proof of concept, a fabric keyboard and game controlling sleeve have been designed to display touch and strain sensing functions. The ionotronic e-textile break through the bottlenecks of traditional wearable ionotronic devices, suggesting a great promising application in future wearable epidermal electronics.

Funding

Shandong Province Key Research and Development Plan(2019JZZY010335); Anhui Province Special Science and Technology Project(201903a05020028); Shandong Provincial Universities Youth Innovation Technology Plan Team(2020KJA013)