Recent progress in electrospun nanomaterials for wearables

Abstract

Wearables have garnered significant attention in recent years not only as consumer electronics for entertainment, communications, and commerce but also for real-time continuous health monitoring. This has been spurred by advances in flexible sensors, transistors, energy storage, and harvesting devices to replace the traditional, bulky, and rigid electronic devices. However, engineering smart wearables that can seamlessly integrate with the human body is a daunting task. Some of the key material attributes that are challenging to meet are skin conformability, breathability, and biocompatibility while providing tunability of its mechanical, electrical, and chemical properties. Electrospinning has emerged as a versatile platform that can potentially address these challenges by fabricating nanofibers with tunable properties from a polymer base. In this article, we review advances in wearable electronic devices and systems that are developed using electrospinning. We cover various applications in multiple fields including healthcare, biomedicine, and energy. We review the ability to tune the electrical, physiochemical, and mechanical properties of the nanofibers underlying these applications and illustrate strategies that enable integration of these nanofibers with human skin.

The Potential of Electrospinning to Enable the Realization of Energy-Autonomous Wearable Sensing Systems

“…The fiber properties are determined by the viscosity and viscoelastic properties of the polymer material . Although the history of electrospinning dates back to the early 1600s, it was not until 1902 that Mortan and Cooley filed multiple patents for the electrospinning process . In 1938, the Soviet Union began using the commercially available electrospun product to capture aerosol particles.…”

“…These fibers can be easily collected as nonwoven mats or aligned into patterns with desirable wearable properties, such as breathability, − washability, biocompatibility, stretchability, and flexibility . These fibers can serve as construction blocks for a variety of components, including sensors, electrodes, and energy storage elements . Especially, due to the ultrafine fabrication nature, electrospinning can produce breathable, washable, transparent, and flexible graphene-based electrodes which are comparatively cost-effective compared with Ag- or Au-based nanostructured electrodes.…”

Electrospun Micro/Nanofiber-Based Biomechanical Sensors

“…Diverse approaches have been employed for producing micro/nanofibers, where electrospinning stands out as the most straightforward and inexpensive technique. , Specifically, micro/nanofibers fabricated via electrospinning have been established as an optimal choice for preparing high-performance flexible biomechanical sensors because of their unique 2D and 3D structures, which provide significant size effects and low defect density. , Plus, their distinct characteristics offer them a larger interface area and sufficient binding sites for the doped materials, leading to high-level active substances and further improving the sensitivity of the resultant flexible biomechanical sensor. Importantly, the superhigh porosity of the electrospun fibrous matrix provides an ample range of spaces for deformation, leading to superior flexibility and exceptional durability for bending, stretching, folding, and twisting. − …”

Development of an all‐electrospun high‐performance textile supercapacitor for wearable device applications

“…Additionally, the fiber orientation will be induced through the collector spinning, aiming to produce ordered filaments as a membrane, where the deposition time controls the membrane thickness 20 . Electrospun polymeric membranes have been used for applications in healthcare, biomedicine, and energy due to their properties like biocompatibility, stretchability, and breathability, which make it possible to use these electrospun membranes in wearable devices 21 …”

“…20 Electrospun polymeric membranes have been used for applications in healthcare, biomedicine, and energy due to their properties like biocompatibility, stretchability, and breathability, which make it possible to use these electrospun membranes in wearable devices. 21 One of the ways to improve the electrochemical behavior of the PANI electrodes is the formation of interconnected fibers by electrospinning, which increases the superficial area compared to a film. 9,14,16 SCs fabricated entirely by fibers have the advantages of flexibility and lightweight and could be integrated into textile devices with potential use in wearable electronics.…”