With the rapid development of flexible
electronics and the increasing
deterioration of the natural environment, functional and environmentally
friendly flexible strain sensors have become one of the frontier research
hotspots. Here, we propose a novel strategy to synthesize a functional
epoxy elastomer integrating self-healing capability and degradability
for flexible stretchable strain sensors. A carboxyl-terminated epoxy
prepolymer was first synthesized using carboxyl-terminated PEG (PEG-COOH),
2,2′-dithiodibenzoic acid (DTSA), and 1,4-butanediol diglycidyl
ether (BDDE), and then crosslinked by epoxidized soybean oil (ESO)
to yield an epoxy elastomer. The obtained elastomer exhibited not
only high tensile stress (5.07 MPa), large stretchability (477%),
and high healing efficiency (92.5%) but also superior degradability
in alkaline aqueous solution. The elastomer-based stretchable strain
sensor with microstructure showed high sensitivity (GF = 176.71) and
was successfully applied for detecting human motions and recognizing
objects with various shapes. Moreover, the healed sensor could restore
stable sensing ability. The prepared functional epoxy elastomer is
of great significance for the preparation of environmentally friendly
and high-performance sensors and is promising for applications in
the fields of healthcare monitoring, intelligent robots, and wearable
electronics.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.