Touch-sensing fabric encapsulated with hydrogel for human-computer interaction
Year: 2021
Journal: Soft Matter, Volume 17, OCT 20, page 9014–9018
Authors: Xu, Ruidong; Qu, Lijun; Tian, Mingwei
Organizations: Shandong Province Key Research and Development Plan [2019JZZY010340, 2019JZZY010335, 2019GGXI02022]
Flexible touch-sensing devices have attracted extensive attention in wearable electronics and human-machine interaction. The ionic touch-sensing hydrogels are ideal candidates for these scenarios, but the absorbed water evaporates easily from the hydrogel, reducing their working time and stability. Herein, we propose a touch-sensing fabric system composed of non-woven cellulose fabrics as a sheath shell layer encapsulated with a hydrogel filling layer. The resultant touch-sensing fabric has a super-thin structure (1 mm) and exhibits a low detecting threshold (50 Pa), high durability (100k times), strain/pressure insensitivity and extremely high touch positioning accuracy. In the proof of concept, a smart touch-sensing glove is equipped with our fabric, which can execute human-computer interaction as a flexible touch-sensing device.
