Vertically Weft-Knitted Smart Kinesiotapes for High-Sensitivity, Low-Drift Textile Strain Sensing in Close-to-Body Motion Monitoring

Research output: Contribution to journal › Research article › Contributed › peer-review

Abstract

Textile-integrated strain sensors enable close-to-body motion monitoring, but performance depends strongly on textile architecture. Embroidered and weft-knitted Smart Kinesiotapes incorporating the same silver-plated polyamide yarn are compared using five specimens per configuration under cyclic elongation in (Formula presented.) increments up to (Formula presented.). The effects of sensor geometry, sensing-path length and knitting orientation on base resistance, drift and relative resistance change are evaluated. Vertical orientation reduces one-line base resistance from (Formula presented.) to (Formula presented.), corresponding to (Formula presented.), and four-line base resistance from (Formula presented.) to (Formula presented.), corresponding to (Formula presented.). Compared with the corresponding vertical structures, the relative resistance changes of the horizontal one- and four-line variants are (Formula presented.) and (Formula presented.) lower, respectively. The vertical variants provide distinct cyclic signals and close temporal agreement with the applied strain. For the embroidered sensors, the straight geometry provides the largest response, whereas extending the sensing path to four lines increases base resistance without amplifying the relative response. The one-line vertically knitted sensor provides the most promising combination of low base resistance, high sensitivity and signal interpretability. These findings provide design guidance for body-conforming textile strain sensors.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Article numbere70605
JournalAdvanced electronic materials
Volume12
Issue number20
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - Oct 2026
Peer-reviewedYes

External IDs

ORCID /0000-0002-0803-8818/work/231454212
ORCID /0000-0003-3849-3798/work/231457779
ORCID /0000-0002-0819-1193/work/231457875
ORCID /0009-0005-1367-851X/work/231458882
ORCID /0009-0001-9849-2300/work/231459024

Keywords

Keywords

  • electrically conductive, embroidered, knitting, metalized yarn, motion capture, sensor, smart textile