Design and Construction of Deformable Heaters: Materials, Structure, and Applications

Abstract Conventional heaters have evolved from traditional rigid heaters to flexible heaters, stretchable heaters, and deformable heaters for the development of soft electronics. Film‐based or filament‐based heaters can be designed and engineered to fulfill the deformable, adaptable and stretchable applications. Compared with conventional heaters, deformable heaters can maintain stable electrothermal property even with large deformation. Based on this, deformable heaters have shown great potential to be used in the field of Internet of Things and work together with other electronic devices. This review summarizes the structure design strategies to achieve deformable heaters. Parameters, such as electrical conductivity, stretchability, thermal capacity, and thermal diffusivity, play essential roles in the effective design and development of heating devices. New methodologies and fabrication processes are developed to obtain deformable heaters that are expected to be highly conductive, adaptable, and conformable, as well as can be readily integrated with wearable fabrics. This review introduces the latest advances from conventional heaters to deformable heaters, emphasizing key recent developments on methodologies and fabrication processes and strategies geared toward applications in electronic skin, healthcare, deicing, sensors, and actuators. The challenges in this area are critically evaluated, and the perspectives for developing future deformable heaters are presented.