A Highly Stretchable ZnO@Fiber‐Based Multifunctional Nanosensor for Strain/Temperature/UV Detection

Abstract

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.

Tailoring force sensitivity and selectivity by microstructure engineering of multidirectional electronic skins

“…Recently, a large number of electronic skins with capabilities of detecting physical/chemical stimuli have been reported for applications in robotics, wearable electronics, and healthcare monitoring devices [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8] . Owing to their wearable or body-attachable features, many types of electronic skins (e-skins) have been actively utilized as innovative tools for monitoring radial and carotid blood pressure 1,2 , and electrophysiological signals 3,4 and for oximetry 5 , as well as drug delivery 6 .…”

Nanomaterial‐Enabled Wearable Sensors for Healthcare

“…[82] Owing to the pyroelectric effect, the current increased with the increase in temperature. High sensitivity of 39.3% °C −1 was achieved when no strain was applied, which decreased to 20.1% °C −1 under 50% strain and to 16.8% °C −1 under 100% strain.…”

“…For wearable photodetectors, various materials such as crumpled graphene-AuNPs, [177] ZnO nanostructures, [82,178,179] rGO/ PVDF-TrFE nanocomposites, [180] MoS 2 /WS 2 heterojunction arrays, [181] Zn 2 SnO 4 NWs, [182] SnO 2 NWs [31,183] were employed for the detection of UV, [31,82,178,179,182,183] infrared (IR), [180] or other light illumination, [177,181] based on the principle that light illumination can excite more electrons into the conduction band generating photocurrent. [31] In particular, a crumpled …”

“…High sensitivity of ≈1.34% °C −1 with a temperature interval of 0.2 °C was demonstrated. In addition to the thermoresistive effect, other effects such as pyroelectric effect [62,82] and thermoelectric effect [83] were also utilized in wearable temperature sensors. Pyroelectric Figure 2.…”

Polyurethane foam coated with a multi-walled carbon nanotube/polyaniline nanocomposite for a skin-like stretchable array of multi-functional sensors

“…7 Beyond the conventional sensor that can detect a single stimulus, novel advanced sensors for simultaneous monitoring of multiple stimuli (multi-functional (MF) sensors) have been actively investigated. 8,9 For practical application of such MF sensors, it is necessary to eliminate the interference between different stimuli that is commonly observed in conventional MF sensors, 10 in addition to fabricating cost-effective sensors on a deformable substrate. Development of MF sensors that transduce different stimuli into separate signals can intrinsically minimize signal interference, thus allowing for sensitive detection of multiple parameters, such as temperature and pressure, in a single device without decoupling analysis.…”