Skin-inspired Janus E-textile with bidirectional motion perception and adaptive moisture management for next-generation wearables

With technological advancements, consumer demands for textile functionality and intelligence have increased substantially. Next-generation E-textiles should enable multidirectional force sensing while ensuring high levels of wearer comfort. However, existing electronic textiles are insufficient to simultaneously monitor the direction and degree of strain, and sweat accumulation can lead to poor comfort. Here, inspired by the asymmetric gradient structure of human skin, Janus double-layer woven electronic textile (JDET) was designed. Through material-structure-function biomimetic design, bidirectional bending recognition and moisture management function are integrated into the device. A high-sensitivity strain sensing unit (GF = 1402.94) was constructed using a single wrapped yarn and conductive materials. Combined with a double-layer fabric structure design, a plain weave layer woven with hydrophilic sensing yarn and a twill weave layer woven with hydrophobic polyester yarn formed a dual gradient structure of fabric wettability and porosity, resulting in excellent unidirectional moisture transport capability. The asymmetric design of the sensing layer enables JDET to selectively identify bending directions (−180°–180°), and has good stability (>8000 s) in bending cycle testing. In addition, JDET has been successfully applied to human motion monitoring and Morse code interaction systems. This asymmetric gradient structure design of textiles provides ideas for the design of the next generation of intelligent electronic textiles.