High-performance Electronic Cloth for Facilitating the Rehabilitation of Human Joints

Abstract

The concern about easily indicating conditions of human joints to facilitate rehabilitation during recovery training has been out of sight, even though it is acknowledged that timely recovering functions of injured joints is a must. To facilitate the situation to be addressed, a stretchable, air permeable electronic cloth (SApEC) was fabricated by electrostatic spinning (ESS) and hot pressing (HP). The SApEC consists of conductive-elastic cloth Ag and composite nanofiber membrane (CNFM) with components of poly(vinylidene fluoride-co-hexa-fluoropropyiene) (P(VDF-HFP)) and thermoplastic urethane (TPU). The electronic cloth not only owns chemical stability and ultralight weight, but also scavenges triboelectric signals from joint movements. These above characters allow the SApEC as an easy and convenient indicator to indicate the activity of joints, when users get trained in non-hospital places. With the assistance of electronic components for signal processing, the SApEC could control alarms, such as a warning lamp. This favorable ability will allow the SApEC to make alerts, once users occur any accidents again, like suddenly falling or being attacked by heart failure. Given the advantages mentioned above, it is reasonable to believe that the SApEC has a promising prospect in portable and wearable electronics, involving in indicating rehabilitation of joints and keeping an eye on users’ safety.

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