Highly stretchable and sensitive strain sensors using nano-graphene coated natural rubber

Abstract

Flexible, stretchable and wearable sensors are needed for the human motion detection. Here, a highly stretchable and sensitive strain sensor is fabricated based on the coating of nanographene platelets on natural rubber by simple dry coating process. The gauge factors are adjustable in the ranges of 0.78-52.53 depended on the preparation conditions and strain state. The sensors showed a high stretchability up to 750% and high durability of 1500 stretching-releasing cycles. The stretchable strain sensors are capable of detecting a bending fingers and the pulse of radial artery on the wrist. In addition, a smart glove made form five independent strain sensors was created. The data of the glove finger motions are used to control an avatar robotic hand.

Synthesis of highly-stretchable graphene – poly(glycerol sebacate) elastomeric nanocomposites piezoresistive sensors for human motion detection applications

“…and with limited linearity [42]. Other work, reports that the nano-graphene coated natural rubber, presents GF values <1 for an applied tensile strain of 100%, and the values found was due to the lower initial resistance of the sensors, promoted by a dense conductive network formation on the top of the rubber substrate [43].…”

3D Printing Technologies for Flexible Tactile Sensors toward Wearable Electronics and Electronic Skin

“…To meet the requirements of flexible tactile sensors for wearable electronics, novel sensing element based various nanomaterials are required. To date, many types of nanomaterials including nanowires (gold and silver) [23,26,73], carbon nanotubes (CNTs) [17,18,19,44,74,75,76,77,78,79,80], polymer micro/nanostructures [16,81], metal nanoparticles [74,82,83,84] and graphene [20,21,22,25,27,28,30,31,32,33,34,36,38,39,41,42,43,44,66,75,82,85,86,87,88,89,90,91,92,93,94,95] have been applied to the design of flexible tactile sensors. Remarkable progress has been made in improving the sensitivity, flexibility, stretchability, frequency response and durability of tactile sensors.…”

Dynamic Measurement of Legs Motion in Sagittal Plane Based on Soft Wearable Sensors

“…The soft strain sensor mainly consists of a soft substrate and stretchable conductive electrodes. The general materials of the substrate are rubber [18][19][20], PDMS [21][22][23][24], cottonbased materials [25][26][27], etc. ; the conductive electrode materials mainly include carbon black [28], carbon nanotubes [25], metal nanowires [29], and grapheme [30]; the measurement principles include capacitance-based type and resistance-based type.…”

“…; the conductive electrode materials mainly include carbon black [28], carbon nanotubes [25], metal nanowires [29], and grapheme [30]; the measurement principles include capacitance-based type and resistance-based type. Repeatability of the resistance-based type is not good, so high precision is hard to be guaranteed [20,25]. Therefore, the capacitive strain sensor is more suitable for human motion measurement, and the capacitive soft sensor based on the dielectric layer of silicone rubber is more advantageous in terms of performance indicators, stability, and lifetime [31].…”