1wileyonlinelibrary.com schemes, the fl exible functional sensors are competitive and attractive candidates for promoting the advancement of sensing system. Recently, for the achievement of sensing devices, the printing technique has attracted widespread attention and been pursued to deposit various materials, like carbon materials, [ 13,23,24 ] polymers, [ 25,26 ] metals, [ 12,27 ] and semiconductors, [ 28,29 ] because the process is low energy consumption while maintaining the unique properties of the materials. By this way, the fl exible devices can be cheaper and easily produced.Graphite, one of carbon allotropes, has been increasing wide and keen interests of researchers, due to a wonder material of graphene. [ 9,[30][31][32] Pencil, a day-to-day material, is a nanocomposite of graphite and intercalated clay. [33][34][35] Being layered or pelleted, pencil lead can be exfoliated by using a gentle force. The drawing process can easily deposit graphite onto a rough paper, which contains massive amounts of cellulose fi bers and offer a naturally porous structure. [ 13,36 ] Pencil-trace drawn on printing papers is perhaps the simplest and easiest way of constructing graphite-based devices. The pen-on-paper (PoP) approach, a basic printing technique, offers a unique method to fabricate fl exible devices, such as strain sensors, [ 35 ] biosensors, [ 19,37 ] microfl uidic chips, [ 38 ] electronic devices, [ 34,39 ] photoconductive sensors, [ 29,40 ] and energy-storage devices. [ 33,41,42 ] Most of these devices have a response to force-induce changes in capacitance [ 33 ] and resistivity. [ 35 ] The microcontact-reversible sensing can effectively translate the microstructural deformations into electrical signals on active fl exible substrates. [ 6,9,43,44 ] As the potential to make fl exible, lightweight, portable, biocompatible, economical, and environment-friendly products, the PoP approach has an important role on the breakthroughs toward fl exible and wearable sensing devices.Herein, we demonstrate that the application of PoP approach can be expanded further to crucial fl exible sensing devices. We evaluated the repeatability of bending-unbending and the robustness of the strain sensors applied by loading. The strain sensors have a rapid respond to microdeformation changes and can be used to monitor various structural change and even human motion through facilitative and effective installing designs. Typically, the microdeformation of <0.13% strain can be detected. Compared with the recently reported fl exible sensing devices, the strain sensors behave signifi cant Flexible and Highly Sensitive Strain Sensors Fabricated by Pencil Drawn for Wearable MonitorXinqin Liao , Qingliang Liao , Xiaoqin Yan , Qijie Liang , Haonan Si , Minghua Li , Hualin Wu , Shiyao Cao , and Yue Zhang * Functional electrical devices have promising potentials in structural health monitoring system, human-friendly wearable interactive system, smart robotics, and even future multifunctional intelligent room. Here, a low-cost fabrication s...

Stretchable and multifunctional sensors can be applied in multifunctional sensing devices, safety forewarning equipment, and multiparametric sensing platforms. However, a stretchable and multifunctional sensor was hard to fabricate until now. Herein, a scalable and efficient fabrication strategy is adopted to yield a sensor consisting of ZnO nanowires and polyurethane fibers. The device integrates high stretchability (tolerable strain up to 150%) with three different sensing capabilities, i.e., strain, temperature, and UV. Typically achieved specifications for strain detection are a fast response time of 38 ms, a gauge factor of 15.2, and a high stability of >10 000 cyclic loading tests. Temperature is detected with a high temperature sensitivity of 39.3% °C−1, while UV monitoring features a large ON/OFF ratio of 158.2. With its fiber geometry, mechanical flexibility, and high stretchability, the sensor holds tremendous prospect for multiparametric sensing platforms, including wearable devices.

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Strain sensors with both of stretchability and ultrahigh sensitivity have been designed and fabricated for various wearable monitoring applications.

Paper-based (PB) green electronics is an emerging and potentially game-changing technology due to ease of recycling/disposal, the economics of manufacture and the applicability to flexible electronics. Herein, new-type printable PB strain sensors (PPBSSs) from graphite glue (graphite powder and methylcellulose) have been fabricated. The graphite glue is exposed to thermal annealing to produce surface micro/nano cracks, which are very sensitive to compressive or tensile strain. The devices exhibit a gauge factor of 804.9, response time of 19.6 ms and strain resolution of 0.038%, all performance indicators attaining and even surpassing most of the recently reported strain sensors. Due to the distinctive sensing properties, flexibility and robustness, the PPBSSs are suitable for monitoring of diverse conditions such as structural strain, vibrational motion, human muscular movements and visual control.

A recyclable and green triboelectronic nanogenerator (TENG) is developed based on triboelectrification and designed cascade reactions. Once triggered by water, the TENG can fully dissolve and degrade into environmentally benign end products. With features of rapid dissolution, reproductivity, and green electronic, the TENG has potential of serving as clearable energy harvester and nanosensor for health monitoring and motion sensing.

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Rapid advances in functional sensing electronics place tremendous demands on innovation toward creative uses of versatile advanced materials and effective designs of device structures. Here, we first report a feasible and effective fabrication strategy to integrate commercial abrasive papers with microcracked gold (Au) nanofilms to construct cuttable and self-waterproof crack-based resistive bending strain sensors. Via introducing surface microstructures, the sensitivities of the bending strain sensors are greatly enhanced by 27 times than that of the sensors without surface microstructures, putting forward an alternative suggestion for other flexible electronics to improve their performances. Besides, the bending strain sensors also endow rapid response and relaxation time of 20 ms and ultrahigh stability of >18 000 strain loading-unloading cycles in conjunction with flexibility and robustness. In addition, the concepts of cuttability and self-waterproofness (attain and even surpass IPX-7) of the bending strain sensors have been demonstrated. Because of the distinctive sensing properties, flexibility, cuttability, and self-waterproofness, the bending strain sensors are attractive and promising for wearable electronic devices and smart health monitoring system.