Recent Advances in Smart Fabric-Type Wearable Electronics toward Comfortable Wearing

Abstract

With the improvement of the energy density and sensing accuracy of wearable devices, there is increasing interest in applying wearable electronics in daily life. However, traditional rigid plate-structured wearable devices cannot meet the human body’s wearing habits and make users may feel uncomfortable after wearing them for a long time. Fabric-type wearable electronics can be conformably coated on human skin without discomfort from mismatches in mechanical properties between the human body and electronics. Although state-of-the-art textile-based wearable devices have shown unique advantages in the field of e-textiles, real-world scenarios often involve stretching, bending, and wetting. Further efforts should be made to achieve “comfortable wearing” due to the great challenge of achieving both promising electrical properties and comfort in a single device. This review presents a comprehensive overview of the advances in smart fabric-based wearable electronics toward comfortable wearing, emphasizing their stretchability, hydrophobicity, air permeability, stability, and color-change abilities. Through addressing the challenges that persist in fabric-type wearable electronics, we are optimistic that these will be soon ubiquitous in our daily lives, offering exceptionally comfortable wearing experiences for health monitoring, sports performance tracking, and even fashion, paving the way for a more comfortable and technologically advanced future.