Wearable technologies are becoming important for the fields of information technology and healthcare, driven mainly by societal issues such as the aging society and the current pandemic. Recently developed flexible/stretchable wearable devices have demonstrated their ability for long‐term healthcare monitoring with improved signal integrity and multimodality. However, the adherence of wearers to such wearable devices cannot be determined only by the function. Here “comfort‐of‐wear” is identified as one of the most critical parameters for future wearables, similar to how clothes are chosen based on how comfortable they are. “Comfort‐of‐wear” is defined as the device's ability to not to disturb the wearers’ daily life. Several engineering approaches are introduced to improve the comfort‐of‐wear of devices—via strategies that include improving flexibility by utilizing a combination of structures, materials, and systems. Finally, the future of wearables enabled by cutting‐edge advanced electronic technologies is proposed.
Arrays of stretchable and transparent electronic sensors realize next-generation skin-conformable wearables and soft robotic skins, which require a high-resolution patternable stretchable conductor. However, the difficulty of simultaneously engineering desirable material properties (i.e., conductivity, stretchability, and patternability) has limited the development of such stretchable electronic materials. Herein, a high-resolution patternable, stretchable, and transparent conducting polymer by decoupled engineering of the material properties is shown. The high conductivity of the conducting polymer is achieved by rationally designing an ionic additive. The high stretchability is realized by matching the mechanical properties of the conducting polymer to the substrate. The developed conducting polymer is then patterned in a resolution less than 10 μm by nanosecond UV laser ablation, which enables the feasible demonstration of stretchable and transparent sensor arrays for touch and strain. The findings in this work will accelerate the development of high-density stretchable sensor arrays and stretchable semiconductor devices.
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