Wearable Sunlight-Triggered Bimorph Textile Actuators.

Photothermal bimorph actuators have attracted considerable attention in intelligent devices because of their cordless control and lightweight and easy preparation. However, current photothermal bimorph actuators are mostly based on films or papers driven by near-infrared sources, which are deficient in flexibility and adaptability, restricting their potential in wearable applications. Herein, a bimorph textile actuator that can be scalably fabricated with a traditional textile route and autonomously triggered by sunlight is reported. The active layer and passive layer of the bimorph are constructed by polypropylene tape and a MXene-modified polyamide filament. Because of the opposite thermal expansion and MXene-enhanced photothermal efficiency (>260%) of the bimorph, the textile actuator presents effective deformation (1.38 cm-1) under low sunlight power (100 mW/cm2). This work provides a new pathway for wearable sunlight-triggered actuators and finds attractive applications for smart textiles.

Customizable Textile Sensors Based on Helical Core-Spun Yarns for Seamless Smart Garments.

Most of the current sensors cannot meet the needs for seamless integration into the textile substrates of smart clothing and require improvements in terms of comfort and durability. Herein, smart textile-based sensors that have different sensing properties with integrated electronic elements were fabricated by knitting graphene-based helical conductive core-spun yarns. Such graphene-modified core-spun yarns are employed as building blocks of textile strain sensors, which showed high elasticity (ε > 300%), fast response time (120 ms), excellent reproducibility (over 10 000 cycles), wide sensing range (up to 100% strain), and low detection limit (0.3% strain). Thus, resistance-type strain sensors and capacitance-type pressure sensors composed of graphene-based smart fabric could be used to monitor large-scale limb movement and subtle human physiological signals. Such seamless smart textile-based fabric composed of superelastic helical conductive core-spun yarns shows great potential for fabricating an intelligent device to achieve real-time precise medicine and healthcare.

Stretchable Conductive Fibers of Ultrahigh Tensile Strain and Stable Conductance Enabled by a Worm-Shaped Graphene Microlayer.

Stretchable electrical conductors have demonstrated promising potentials in a wide range of wearable electronic devices, but the conductivity of most reported stretchable conductive fibers will be changed if be stretched or strained. Stable conductance is essential for wearable and stretchable devices, to ensure the performance is stable. Inspired by the peristaltic behavior of arthropods, we designed a graphene coating similar to the caterpillar structure on the polyurethane (PU) fiber surface, enabled by coating the worm-shaped graphene microlayer onto polyurethane filaments. Such worm-shaped filaments can be stretched up to 1010% with a wide reversible electroresponse range (0 < ε < 815%), long-term durability (>4000 stretching/releasing cycles), good initial conductivity (σ0 = 124 S m-1), and high quality factor (Q = 11.26). Remarkably, the worm-shaped filaments show distinctive strain-insensitive behavior (ΔR/R0 < 0.1) up to 220% strain. Furthermore, the filaments as electrical circuits of light emitting diodes (LEDs) to track signals from robust human joint movements are also demonstrated for practical application. Such worm-shaped filaments with distinctive strain-insensitive behavior provide a direct pathway for stretchy electronics.

Textile Waste Fiber Regeneration via a Green Chemistry Approach: A Molecular Strategy for Sustainable Fashion.

Fast fashion, as a continuously growing part of the textile industry, is widely criticized for its excessive resource use and high generation of textiles. To reduce its environmental impacts, numerous efforts are focused on finding sustainable and eco-friendly approaches to textile recycling. However, waste textiles and fibers are still mainly disposed of in landfills or by incineration after their service life and thereby pollute the natural environment, as there is still no effective strategy to separate natural fibers from chemical fibers. Herein, a green chemistry strategy is developed for the separation and regeneration of waste textiles at the molecular level. Cellulose/wool keratin composite fibers and multicomponent fibers are regenerated from waste textiles via a green chemical process. The strategy attempts to reduce the large amount of waste textiles generated by the fast-developing fashion industry and provide a new source of fibers, which can also address the fossil fuel reserve shortages caused by chemical fiber industries and global food shortages caused by natural fiber production.

Multiscale Disordered Porous Fibers for Self-Sensing and Self-Cooling Integrated Smart Sportswear.

Smart clothing has demonstrated potential applications in a wide range of wearable fields for human body monitoring and self-adaption. However, current wearable sensors often suffer from not seamlessly integrating with normal clothing, restricting sensing ability, and a negative wearing experience. Here, integrated smart clothing is fabricated by employing multiscale disordered porous elastic fibers as sensing units, which show the capability of inherently autonomous self-sensing (i.e., strain and temperature sensing) and self-cooling. The multiscale disordered porous structure of the fibers contributes to the high transparency of mid-infrared human body radiation and backscatter of visible light, which allows the microenvironment temperature between the skin and clothing to drop at least ∼2.5 °C compared with cotton fabrics. After the capillary-assisted adsorption of graphene inks, the modified porous fibers could also possess real-time strain and temperature-sensing capacities with a high gauge factor and thermal coefficient of resistance. As a proof of concept, the integrated smart sportswear achieved the measuring of body temperature, the tracking of large-scale limb movements, and the collection of subtle human physiological signals, along with the intrinsic self-cooling ability.