Human motion analysis consists of real‐time monitoring and recording of human body's kinematics. It is very essential to track ambulatory and daily‐life human motion, which is crucial for many applications and disciplines. Electronic textiles (e‐textiles) afford a valid alternative to traditional solid‐state sensors due to their merits of low cost, lightweight, flexibility, and feasibility to fit various human bodies. In this mini‐review, textile‐based sensor platforms and human motion analysis are well discussed in Section 1. Second, theoretical principles of textile‐based strain sensors are introduced including resistive, capacitive, and piezoelectrical sensors. Section 3 focuses on various types of textile materials that are functionalized as sensing systems by intrinsic or extrinsic modifications. Section 4 summaries various types of e‐textile‐based strain sensors for human motion analysis. The final two sections mainly present perspectives and challenges, and conclusions, respectively.

Flexible organic−inorganic hybrids are promising thermoelectric materials to recycle waste heat in versatile formats. However, current organic/inorganic hybrids suffer from inferior thermoelectric properties due to aggregate nanostructures. Here we demonstrate flexible organic−inorganic hybrids where size-tunable Bi₂Te₃ nanoparticles are discontinuously monodispersed in the continuous conductive polymer phase, completely distinct from traditional bi-continuous hybrids. Periodic nanofillers significantly scatter phonons while continuous conducting polymer phase provides favored electronic transport, resulting in ultrahigh power factor of ~1350 μW m⁻¹ K⁻² and ultralow in-plane thermal conductivity of ~0.7 W m⁻¹ K⁻¹. Consequently, figure-of-merit (ZT) of 0.58 is obtained at room temperature, outperforming all reported organic materials and organic−inorganic hybrids. Thermoelectric properties of as-fabricated hybrids show negligible change for bending 100 cycles, indicating superior mechanical flexibility. These findings provide significant scientific foundation for shaping flexible thermoelectric functionality via synergistic integration of organic and inorganic components.

Wearable thermoelectric devices show promise to generate electricity in a ubiquitous, unintermittent and noiseless way for on-body applications. Three-dimensional thermoelectric textiles (TETs) outperform other types in smart textiles owing to their out-of-plane thermoelectric generation and good structural conformability with fabrics. Yet, there has been a lack of efficient strategies in scalable manufacture of TETs for sustainably powering electronics. Here, we fabricate organic spacer fabric shaped TETs by sewing carbon nanotube yarn based segmented thermoelectric textiles on a large scale. Combining finite element analysis with experimental evaluation, we elucidate that the fabric structure significantly influences the power generation. The optimally designed TET with good wearability and stability shows a high output power density of 51.5 mW m⁻² and a high specific power of 171.7 μW (g K)⁻¹ at ΔT = 47.5 K. The promising on-body application of the TET in directly and continuously powering electronics for healthcare and environmental monitoring is fully demonstrated. This work will broaden the research vision and provide new routines for developing high-performance and large-scale TETs toward practical applications.

Wearable inorganic semiconductor (ISC) based thermoelectric (TE) devices, especially fiber-based thermoelectric textiles (TETs), show promise in electrical power generation and solid-state cooling compared with bulk ISC-based TE generators (TEGs). However, it is challenging to use the ISCs, with brittleness and mechanical instability, to produce thermoelectric fibers for weaving TETs. Here, we report a strategy to produce ISC-based segmented hierarchically ternary coaxial TE strings at large scale for semi-automatically manufacturing a highly mechanically stable, stretchable, breathable and washable woven TET by a textile machine. The TET demonstrates good stretchability (100% elongation), flexibility (bending radius of 2 mm), washability (>20 washing cycles) and output power density of 0.58 W m⁻² at a temperature difference of 25 K (predicted power density of 6.06 W m⁻² at ΔT = 80 K). With the assistance of finite element analysis, the significance of the fabric’s structure on the excellent mechanical and TE performance of the TET has been clarified, which reaches an output voltage of ∼0.28 V at an ambient temperature of ∼8 °C. For practical applications, it can continuously power on-body electronics for monitoring the environment and the human body’s vital signals and activities by wearing it on the arm with a self-built temperature gradient of ∼16 K. Furthermore, the TET can stably generate solid-state cooling of 3.1 K in quiescent air (T_ambient ∼ 26 °C, relative humidity ∼60%). This work paves a new way for designing durable, stretchable and washable ISC-based TETs toward real on-body applications.