ADDITIVE MANUFACTURED FLEXIBLE TEXTILE-BASED SENSORS: A BRIEF OVERVIEW

Abstract

Additive manufacturing technologies have a great potential for use in the manufacture of flexible sensors and in recent years, rapid research advances have been achieved in this field. Moreover, by combining textiles with printing technologies, novel sensing structures can be developed, eliminating the disadvantages of rigid sensors. These sensors are in great demand in various applications from the field of wearable e-textiles, such as sports, rehabilitation, and in medical tasks like vital sign monitoring. Printing makes possible to design patterns with complicated structures that could not be possible with the traditional weaving techniques, for example, because of the lack of precision. This also allows the use of a wide range of materials with advanced properties. Flexible sensors require flexible materials that can withstand the mechanical demands of bending, twisting or compression, provide comfort and most importantly withstand repeated washing cycles. In this document, we briefly overview the flexible sensors manufactured via different printing approaches and the flexible materials developed by recent studies in this area. Moreover, we discuss a hot topic in current research: self-powered flexible sensors. These sensors eliminate the need for an external power source, enabling fully portability and lightweight wearable devices. On the other hand, we present some challenges encountered in the field of flexible printed sensors.

Keywords

• sensorised textiles
• wearables
• printing
• flexibility
• comfort
• durability