Powder & Ceramics Division, Korea Institute of Materials Science , Changwon 51508, Republic of Korea.
ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2017 Jun 14;9(23):19612-19621. doi: 10.1021/acsami.7b03474. Epub 2017 Jun 1.
Recent efforts to develop stretchable resistive heaters open up the possibility for their use in wearable thermotherapy applications. Such heaters should have high electrothermal performance and stability to be used practically, and the fabrication must be simple, economic, reproducible, and scalable. Here we present a simple yet highly efficient way of producing high-performance stretchable heaters, which is based on a facile kirigami pattering (the art of cutting and folding paper) of a highly conductive paper for practical wearable thermotherapy. The resulting kirigami heater exhibits high heating performance at low voltage (>40 °C at 1.2 V) and fast thermal response (<60 s). The simple kirigami patterning approach enables the heater to be extremely stretchable (>400%) while stably retaining its excellent performance. Furthermore, the heater shows the uniform spatial distribution of heat over the whole heating area and is highly durable (1000 cycles at 300% strain). The heater attached to curvilinear body parts shows stable heating performance even under large motions while maintaining intimate conformal contact with the skin thanks to the high stretchability and sufficient restoring force. The usability of the heater as a wearable thermotherapy device is demonstrated by increased blood flow at the wrist during operation.
最近，人们致力于开发可拉伸的电阻式加热器，这为其在可穿戴热疗应用中得到应用提供了可能。这种加热器应该具有高的电热性能和稳定性，才能实际应用，而且其制造必须简单、经济、可重复且可扩展。在这里，我们提出了一种简单但非常高效的生产高性能可拉伸加热器的方法，该方法基于对高度导电纸进行简易的剪纸图案化（剪纸艺术），以用于实际的可穿戴热疗。由此产生的剪纸加热器在低电压下表现出出色的加热性能（在 1.2V 时>40°C）和快速的热响应（<60s）。这种简单的剪纸图案化方法使加热器具有极高的可拉伸性（>400%），同时稳定地保持其出色的性能。此外，该加热器在整个加热区域显示出均匀的空间热分布，并且具有高度的耐用性（在 300%应变下循环 1000 次）。由于其高的可拉伸性和足够的回复力，附着在弯曲的身体部位的加热器即使在大运动下也能保持稳定的加热性能，并与皮肤保持紧密的贴合接触。该加热器作为可穿戴热疗设备的可用性通过在操作过程中手腕处的血流量增加得到了证明。
