Wearable sensors woven into apparel

Potential applications include monitoring exercise, sleep, and stress, plus diagnosing and monitoring disease through breath and vital signs.

Spun from PECOTEX, a new Imperial-developed cotton-based conductive thread, the sensors cost little to manufacture as $0.15 produces a metre of thread to integrate over 10 sensors into clothing. The breakthrough is detailed in Materials Today. 

In a statement, first author Fahad Alshabouna, PhD candidate at Imperial’s Department of Bioengineering, said: “The flexible medium of clothing means our sensors have a wide range of applications. They’re also relatively easy to produce which means we could scale up manufacturing and usher in a new generation of wearables in clothing.” 

The research team embroidered the sensors into a face mask to monitor breathing, a t-shirt to monitor heart activity, and textiles to monitor gases like ammonia, a component of the breath that can be used to track liver and kidney function. The ammonia sensors were developed to test whether gas sensors could also be manufactured using embroidery.