Fully printed and multifunctional graphene-based wearable e-textiles for personalized healthcare applications

Islam, Md Rashedul; Afroj, Shaila; Beach, Christopher; Islam, Mohammad Hamidul; Parraman, Carinna; Abdelkader, Amr; Casson, Alexander J.; Novoselov, Kostya S.; Karim, Nazmul

Abstract

Wearable e-textiles have gained huge tractions due to their potential for non-invasive health monitoring. However, manufacturing of multifunctional wearable e-textiles remains challenging, due to poor performance, comfortability, scalability, and cost. Here, we report a fully printed, highly conductive, flexible, and machine-washable e-textiles platform that stores energy and monitor physiological conditions including bio-signals. The approach includes highly scalable printing of graphene-based inks on a rough and flexible textile substrate, followed by a fine encapsulation to produce highly conductive machine-washable e-textiles platform. The produced e-textiles are extremely flexible, conformal, and can detect activities of various body parts. The printed in-plane supercapacitor provides an aerial capacitance of ∼3.2 mFcm−2 (stability ∼10,000 cycles). We demonstrate such e-textiles to record brain activity (an electroencephalogram, EEG) and find comparable to conventional rigid electrodes. This could potentially lead to a multifunctional garment of graphene-based e-textiles that can act as flexible and wearable sensors powered by the energy stored in graphene-based textile supercapacitors.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Feb 15, 2022
• Online Publication Date: Feb 18, 2022
• Publication Date: Mar 18, 2022
• Deposit Date: Mar 14, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 15, 2022
• Journal: iScience
• Electronic ISSN: 2589-0042
• Publisher: Elsevier (Cell Press)
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 25
• Issue: 3
• Article Number: 103945
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2022.103945
• Keywords: Multidisciplinary
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/9206391