ABSTRACT
Flexible wearable sensors have been attracting the attention of researchers since the early 20th century. The major challenges with conventional wearable sensors are their bulk, weight, and lack of comfort. Textile-based flexible sensors are excellent candidates for replacing conventional flexible sensors due to their potential for lightweight, cost-effective, sustainable, comfortable, and multifunctional products. New technology and materials have made it possible to fabricate flexible wearable sensors from textile-based structures. Textile-based structures can be in fiber, yarn, or fabric forms. Intrinsically conductive materials can be used in sensor fabrication, and if the materials are not intrinsically conductive, they can be coated or treated with conductive materials to form flexible wearable electronics. Conductive materials can be polymer-based, metal-based, carbon-based, and composite-based structures. They can be fabricated using conventional textile manufacturing processes like fiber and yarn spinning, coating, printing, knitting, weaving, and embroidering. Textile-based flexible wearable sensors have a wide range of applications in healthcare, military and defense, automotive, sports, agriculture, and artificial intelligence as motion monitoring devices, temperature and humidity sensors, electrochemical biosensing materials, and so on. However, more research is necessary on wearable flexible sensors to improve their sensitivity, accuracy, mechanical durability, sustainability, cost-effectiveness, mass fabrication methods, and standardization. Once these challenges are addressed, textile-based flexible sensors can become commercial products. The future market forecasts reveal an enormous potential for textile-based flexible wearable sensors.
