MXene‐Reinforced Polymer Composites as Flexible Wearable Sensors

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the healthcare system has undergone a transformation in which patients must be regularly observed without the requirement for hospitalisation. The advancement of wearable sensors has helped accelerate the revolution in personalised healthcare with their ability to accurately sense different body parameters. MXenes, a unique category of two-dimensional materials have risen to prominence as an option for wearable applications in recent years due to their good mechanical properties, hydrophilicity, surface functional groups, electrical conductivity, large and tunable interlayer spacing, and greater specific surface area. However, the limitations of easy stacking, limited flexibility and poor stability in an oxygen environment impede the continued development of pure MXenes. The advantages of polymers which include low cost, easy fabrication, and tunable functionality have made them widely used in the advancement of MXene-based composites as a wearable sensor. A combination of polymer flexibility and MXene sensing ability can be utilized to improve the sensing operation of flexible sensors. This chapter primarily describes the structure, synthesis techniques, characterisitics of MXenes-reinforced polymer composite materials as physical sensors, including pressure and strain sensors for applications in monitoring the human health.