Bifunctional Smart Textiles with Simultaneous Motion Monitoring and Thermotherapy for Human Joint Injuries

The motion detection and thermotherapy provides a convenient strategy for the diagnosis and rehabilitation assessment of joint injuries. However, it is still challenging to simultaneously achieve accurate joint motion monitoring and on-demand thermotherapy. Herein, core-sheath sensing yarns (CSSYs) is proposed and fabricated for excellent electrical and photothermal heating, which consists of carbon black (CB)-coated nylon (sheath layer), silver-plated nylon and elastic spandex yarns (core layer). The CSSYs demonstrates great joule heating performance, which reaches 75 °C at 2 V applied voltage. The good thermal management performance can be well maintained when weaving these yarns into bifunctional smart textile. Further, the optimized double-ply CSSYs (DPCSSYs) with helically twisted structure possess several appealing sensing performance, including preferable strain sensitivity (0.854), excellent linearity (0.962), and superior durability (over 5000 cycles). The as-woven bifunctional smart textile can provide instant and convenient thermotherapy to the injured joints, and simultaneously monitor the injury and recovery conditions of the joint. Therefore, the designed bifunctional smart textile can provide a promising route for developing next-generation healthcare smart textile.