Wearable organic nano-sensors

Taking advantage of the wide range of properties of organic materials, multifunctional sensors with flexibility/stretchability are rapidly developing and as a result, the design of wearable sensors has become a major research target. Owing to the boost in the area of organic electronic materials, different device architectures can be adopted to realize flexible and stretchable organic sensors for potentially wearable applications. This chapter discusses several types of wearable organic nano-sensors, namely, resistor-based sensors, organic field-effect transistor based sensors, electrochemical sensors, and diode-based sensors. Other than the above-mentioned four types of devices, other devices can also be fabricated to function as sensors such as soft and stretchable capacitive sensors of torsion, strain, and touch using hollow elastomeric fibers. Accompanied with other wearable active constituent parts, including a wearable power source, stretchable electrical interconnection, and lightweight information processor, the practical commercialization of smart clothing can be expected in the near future.