[论文解读] Multi-material Direct Ink Writing and Embroidery for Stretchable Wearable Sensors

Lukas Cha, Ryman Hashem+4 more|arXiv (Cornell University)|Mar 18, 2026

Advanced Sensor and Energy Harvesting Materials被引用 0

一句话总结

该论文提出一种混合制造工作流，直接将硅橡胶–碳脂肪油脂粘合的应变传感器打印到纺织品上，并通过自动刺绣进行机械锚固与电气互联，从而实现可伸缩的可穿戴运动传感。它展示了机械耐久性、对60%应变线性响应，以及在肘部/膝关节角度监测中的应用。

ABSTRACT

The development of wearable sensing systems for sports performance tracking, rehabilitation, and injury prevention has driven growing demand for smart garments that combine comfort, durability, and accurate motion detection. This paper presents a textile-compatible fabrication workflow that integrates multi-material direct ink writing with automated embroidery to create stretchable strain sensors directly embedded into garments. The process combines sequential multi-material printing of a silicone-carbon grease-silicone stack with automated embroidery that provides both mechanical fixation and electrical interfacing in a single step. The resulting hybrid sensor demonstrates stretchability up to 120% strain while maintaining electrical continuity, with approximately linear behaviour up to 60% strain (R^2 = 0.99), a gauge factor of 31.4, and hysteresis of 22.9%. Repeated loading-unloading tests over 80 cycles show baseline and peak drift of 0.135% and 0.236% per cycle, respectively, indicating moderate cycle-to-cycle stability. Mechanical testing further confirms that the silicone-fabric interface remains intact under large deformation, with failure occurring in the textile rather than at the stitched boundary. As a preliminary proof of concept, the sensor was integrated into wearable elbow and knee sleeves for joint angle monitoring, showing a clear correlation between normalised resistance change and bending angle. By addressing both mechanical fixation and electrical interfacing through embroidery-based integration, this approach provides a reproducible and scalable pathway for incorporating printed stretchable electronics into textile systems for motion capture and soft robotic applications.

研究动机与目标

• Motivate and enable textile-compatible fabrication of stretchable sensors for sports medicine and wearable tech.
• Develop a hybrid printed–embroidered workflow to integrate sensors directly onto fabrics.
• Evaluate mechanical, electrical, and durability performance under cyclic loading and motion application.

提出的方法

• Multi-material direct ink writing of a silicone–carbon grease stack to form a resistive strain sensor on a printer platform.
• Automated embroidery to mechanically anchor the sensor and create electrical interconnects with conductive thread.
• Tensile testing with cyclic loading to measure resistance vs. strain, linearity, hysteresis, and drift.
• Monotonic stretch-to-failure test to determine maximum stretchability and failure mode.
• Elbow and knee sleeve demonstrations to calibrate resistance change with joint angle against OpenCV ground truth.

Figure 1: (1) Multi-material direct ink writing of silicone and conductive ink to form a soft, stretchable strain sensor. (2) Automated embroidery mechanically anchors the printed sensor to a textile substrate while simultaneously creating electrical interconnects. (3) The integrated system enables

实验结果

研究问题

• RQ1 Can printed multilayer silicone–conductive ink sensors be robustly embedded into textiles using embroidery for both fixation and interconnection?
• RQ2 What are the mechanical and electrical performance characteristics (linearity, sensitivity, hysteresis, drift) of the printed–embroidered sensor under cyclic deformation?
• RQ3 Is the integrated sensor capable of accurate joint-angle monitoring in wearable garments?
• RQ4 What are the failure modes and durability limits of the embroidered, textile-integrated sensor under repetitive strain?

主要发现

Metric	Value
Linearity R²	0.990
Sensitivity	31.42
Hysteresis [%]	22.90
Stretchability [%]	120
Rel. Baseline Drift/Cycle [%]	0.135
Rel. Peak Drift/Cycle [%]	0.236

• Sensor shows stretchability up to 120% with approximately linear response up to 60% strain (R2 = 0.99).
• Gauge factor is 31.4 and hysteresis is 22.9%.
• 80-cycle cyclic loading yields baseline drift 0.135% per cycle and peak drift 0.236% per cycle.
• Stretch-to-failure occurs at 120% strain with fabrication interface remaining intact; fabric fails first.
• Elbow and knee demonstrations show correlated normalized resistance change with joint angle; knee MAPEs ~17–18% and linear region limited by ~60% strain.

Figure 2: Fabrication and integration of the printed strain sensor. (a) Direct ink writing process of the sensor (b) Embroidery step used to stitch and mechanically anchor the printed sensor to the fabric. (c) Front view of the integrated strain sensor showing the printed and stitched structure. (d)