Wearable humidity sensor embroidered on a commercial face mask and its electrical properties

Owing to the rapid development in the field of e-textile-based flexible and portable sensors, the present work demonstrates a fully textile-based stretchable face mask humidity sensor which was created using digital embroidery technique. The design of the sensor was comprised of interdigitated structured electrodes made up of polymer core-based conductive silver-coated threads and hygroscopic threads embedded between them. The fabricated sensor performed well towards moisture detection in accordance with the principle where resistance of the face mask sensor decreased with the increase in the relative humidity along with the changing operational frequency in the range from 1 Hz to 200 kHz. The electrical response (resistance, impedance, capacitance and phase angle) of the novel thread-based sensor towards change in relative humidity was recorded and showed in the present work. The embroidery of polymer-based threads onto the face mask towards humidity sensing offers a novel wearable platform for more extended biomedical applications for detection of various breath biomarkers and thus early diagnosis of diseases. Supplementary information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10853-022-08135-2.