Non-woven polyester fabric is an inexpensive, flexible, breathable, and mechanically robust substrate suited for wearable electronics, yet integrating electronic functionalities without compromising softness and comfort remains challenging. We report WeTex, a multifunctional platform demonstrating the first instance of superhydrophilicity (0° contact angle), achieved via a simple Kinetic Immersion Coating (KIC) technique. This transformation from hydrophobic (117.8°) to a superhydrophilic state occurs without post-treatments, leveraging residual oxygen-containing functional groups, and the capillary architecture of the fiber to eliminate kinetic barriers for analyte ingress. Importantly, the rGO-coated textile retains its softness, breathability, and flexibility while achieving a sheet resistance value of approximately 4.7 × 10 4 Ω/sq, which is lower than values reported for similar textile coatings, while preserving substrate softness and mechanical comfort. By optimizing the 3D porous network, we enhance the surface area, allowing capacitive current to stabilize the electrochemical environment. We demonstrate the versatility of this platform via capacitive touch sensors (SNR∼34) resulting sensitivity of 10 ADC counts/kPa; and resistive deformation sensors (SNR∼26) with sensitivity of 67.18 Ω/Pa; and an electrochemical biosensor for sweat glucose detection. The platform achieves sweat glucose detection across the physiological range with a sensitivity of 0.119 μA·μM -1 and a detection limit of ∼0.471 μM. Beyond the glucose monitoring, the system exhibits multi-stimuli responsiveness, including humidity-responsive conductance changes and contact-based user identification. Further, we validate the practical utility of WeTex via user studies for electrochemical biosensing, touch, and deformation sensing. Collectively, WeTex establishes a reproducible approach for imparting electronic properties into textiles for multifunctional sensing. • Superhydrophilic rGO-polyester enables rapid wicking for stable biosensing. • KIC fabrication yields high conductivity while preserving fabric breathability. • Unified material supports touch, motion, and electrochemical glucose sensing. • Achieves 0.119 μA/μM sensitivity and a 470 nM glucose detection limit. • On-body validation confirms performance for touch and sweat glucose monitoring. • A scalable, low-cost pathway for multifunctional electronic textile integration.
Roy et al. (Fri,) studied this question.