Graphene in wearable textile sensor devices for healthcare

Abstract

Current advances in flexible, textile wearable device manufacturing are being made through a new generation of materials and nanotechnology. These recent advances make integrating functional sensors into textiles easier and allow for widespread application, including healthcare. Through improving the materials and integration techniques used, wearable sensors can be used to create personalised healthcare products that can monitor vital physical and biological signals. One material that is leading the way for future healthcare systems is graphene. Graphene has superior electrical and thermal conductivity, high chemical stability, and extreme mechanical properties. It also offers a variety of hybrid types that are useful when designing cost-effective and scalable electronic devices for textile applications. This review will outline how graphene and textile-based materials are being used to manufacture wearable health-monitoring devices as well as the challenges and opportunities of graphene and textile-based materials.

Keywords:

• Wearable sensors
• textiles
• graphene
• healthcare devices
• printing

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Figure 7. (a) Schematic illustration of the screen-printing process used with the graphene inks. (Reprinted from (He, Zhang, et al., 2019) with permission, Copyright © 2019 American Chemical Society). (b) Inkjet-printed graphene electrodes for accomplishing repeatable electrochemical performance. (Reprinted from (Pandhi et al., 2020) with permission, Copyright © The Royal Society of Chemistry 2020). (c) Gravure printing of graphene for the rapid production of conductive patterns on flexible substrates. (Reprinted from (Secor et al., 2014) with permission, Copyright © 2014 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim). (d) Schematic representation of the flexographic printing process. (Reprinted from (Macadam et al., 2022) with permission, Copyright © 2021 The Authors. Advanced Engineering Materials published by Wiley-VCH GmbH).

Figure 8. Different graphene-based sensors for health monitoring. (a) ECG and EMG signals by graphene electronic tattoo (GET) sensors attached on chest and forearm. (b) ECG measurement using a commercial electrode (Ag/AgCl) and chemically reduced graphene oxide-based (CRGO) dry electrodes on paper substrates. (c) Measuring ECG signal with two fingers placed on printed graphene electrode on fabric substrates. (d) EMG signals recorded from biceps brachii muscle and ECG signals recorded from right arm using rGOpPDMS bioelectrodes. (e) fragmentized graphene foam (FGF) and the relative resistance change of the sensor with different content of FGF under strain. (f) Fabricating a fish-scale-like rGO strain sensor (FSG) and relative resistance responses of FSG strain sensor Pressure sensors; (g) a hybrid structure GO/Gr (graphene) pressure sensor and its characteristics under pressure. (h) Paper-based flexible pressure sensors for monitoring human activity including applications for respiration detection, pulse detection, movement monitoring, and voice recognition (reproduced with permission.(Reproduced from (Heo, Hossain, & Kim, 2020) with permission, Creative Commons Attribution License.

Additional information

Funding

Md Raju Ahmed received funding from Dean Award, The University of Manchester. S. Newby received funding from British Women International through the FfWG Crosby Hall Fellowship Award.