3D textile structures with integrated electroactive electrodes for wearable electrochemical sensors

Abstract

Common textile fabrication techniques have been utilised as scalable and cost-effective production methods for fabricating flexible 3 D textile electrode platforms. These textile structures may be readily integrated with electroactive electrodes that can potentially carry out electrochemical detection in wearable devices. Here we demonstrate that conductive fibre or yarn-based electrodes can be readily incorporated into knitted and braided textile structures for electrochemical detection. Due to the poor nature of these commodity-based conducting yarns and fibres surface modification utilising electrodeposition of conducting polypyrrole and or gold nanoparticles was demonstrated to enhance the device performance.

Keywords:

• wearable sensor
• textile-based sensor
• conducting polymers
• knitting
• braiding

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The authors acknowledge funding support from the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence Scheme (CE 140100012), the Australian National Fabrication Facility (ANFF) -Materials Node under the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy providing nano- and micro-fabrication facilities for Australia’s researchers, the facilities at the University of Wollongong Electron Microscopy Center, and Global challenges travel scholarship. DE also thanks Vice-Chancellor’s Research Fellowship program at RMIT University.