Multifunctional, Light-Weight Wearable Sensor Based on 3D Porous Polyurethane Sponge Coated with MXene and Carbon Nanotubes Composites

Abstract

With the rapid development of wearable electronics, a resistive sensor with high performance and multifunctional monitoring abilities turns out to be a great challenge for industrial application fields. Herein, a wearable 3D porous polyurethane (PU) sponge sensor coated with MXene and carbon nanotubes (CNTs) composites is self-assembled through a simple ultrasonic dip-coating process. The alternate assembly and the synergistic effect of MXene and CNTs contribute to a tough and complete 1D/2D conductive network, which significantly extends the measurement ability of the proposed MXene/CNTs@PU sensor from a wide-compressive strain range (−80%) to a wide-stretching strain range (60%). Moreover, benefit from this unique tough multidimensional MXene/CNTs structure, the presented sensor is endowed with excellent electrical response and stability during the long-term reproducibility test over 5000 cycles. This study also demonstrates the versatile applications (stretching and compression) of the MXene/CNTs@PU sensor, such as detecting subtle expressions, vocal vibrations, body actions of human motions, and lighting light emitting diode lamps. Thus, this advanced sensor indicates great potential for emerging applications in human–machine interaction, healthcare, and wearable devices.