High-performance multimodal smart textile for artificial sensation and health monitoring

Textile sensors are a branch of revolutionary electronics that carry tantalizing prospects toward myriad applications. However, their capability of differentiating multiple stimuli still remains a challenge. Here, we develop a multimodal smart textile that can simultaneously measure temperature and pulse/touch in real time, with high performance and no signal interference. The smart textile outputs two independent variables, with the whole textile as a triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) to detect touch/pulse and its core thermoresistive micro/nano porous fiber strand (also is the TENG’s working electrode) to detect temperature. The stretchable core thermoresistive micro/nano porous fiber of the smart textile achieves record-high thermal sensitivity (β = 4994.55 K, α=−5.58%/K at 26 ℃) and the fastest response/recovery time (97/239 ms) among previously reported fiber/textile-based temperature sensors, to our best knowledge. This fiber based on the growth of Fe2(MoO4)3 on graphene has much higher temperature sensing performance (∼3.2 times higher thermal sensitivity) than that based on directly blending Fe2(MoO4)3 and graphene. Moreover, the fiber has high thermal stability and its temperature sensing performance is insensitive to strain (stretching, bending and pressing). The smart textile is demonstrated for artificial sensation and health monitoring to simultaneously provide accurate profiles of both temperature and touch/pulse. This work provides new insights for wearable sensors.