Rapid and economic preparation of wearable thermotherapy pad based on simple cut-patterning of metal foil supported by plastic sheets

Abstract

Stretchable and skin-mountable heaters have found application in the emerging industry of wearable thermotherapy devices. However, despite their excellent heating performances, most of them commonly suffer from complex, time-consuming, costly, or insufficiently reproducible fabrication processes. In this study, we report a simple, economic, and reproducible strategy to fabricate high-performance stretchable heaters based on facile cut-patterning of plastic sheet/metal foil/plastic sheet (PMP) structures. Further, this method can be executed without expensive materials or cumbersome material synthesis. The fabricated PMP heater is confirmed to exhibit excellent and uniform heating performance at a low voltage and satisfactory electrothermal stability even under high strain and repeated loads. Additionally, the proposed heater designs can be easily customized by simply changing the computer-aided design drawings during the cutting process, which also enables fabrication of devices with large area. The fabricated PMP heater is confirmed to be able to maintain conformal contact with target surfaces even under stretched conditions, inducing a fairly uniform temperature distribution. Finally, it is successfully demonstrated that a PMP heating band can be easily worn on the wrist and is capable of transferring enough heat to increase blood perfusion in the heated area even at a low voltage, highlighting its potential in wearable thermotherapy.