Patterned, highly stretchable and conductive nanofibrous PANI/PVDF strain sensors based on electrospinning and in situ polymerization

Abstract

A facile fabrication strategy via electrospinning and followed by in situ polymerization to fabricate a patterned, highly stretchable, and conductive polyaniline/poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PANI/PVDF) nanofibrous membrane is reported. Owing to the patterned structure, the nanofibrous PANI/PVDF strain sensor can detect a strain up to 110%, for comparison, which is 2.6 times higher than the common nonwoven PANI/PVDF mat and much larger than the previously reported values (usually less than 15%). Meanwhile, the conductivity of the patterned strain sensor shows a linear response to the applied strain in a wide range from 0% to about 85%. Additionally, the patterned PANI/PVDF strain sensor can completely recover to its original electrical and mechanical values within a strain range of more than 22%, and exhibits good durability over 10,000 folding-unfolding tests. Furthermore, the strain sensor also can be used to detect finger motion. The results demonstrate promising application of the patterned nanofibrous membrane in flexible electronic fields.

Durable, efficient, and flexible piezoelectric nanogenerator from electrospun PANi/HNT/PVDF blend nanocomposite

“…Similarly, when PVDF/PANi membranes were subjected to bending and tapping, the current output increased significantly. The high voltage and current output of PVDF/PANi membranes might play an important role in flexible and stretchable electronic devices .…”

Colorful Hydrophobic Poly(Vinyl Butyral)/Cationic Dye Fibrous Membranes via a Colored Solution Electrospinning Process

“…The electrospun (e-spun) nanofibers can be collected as nanofiber membrane (NFM) and have been found in various applications such as tissue engineering scaffolds, [5, 6] drug delivery, [6, 7] wound dressing, [8, 9] high efficiency particulate air filter, [10] flexible nano-optoelectronic devices, [11, 12] nanosensors, [12, 13] protective clothing, [14, 15], and so on. However, the typical e-spun NFM usually appears white, which is the common color of polymers and mainly due to the physical phenomenon of light scattering [16, 17].…”

A semitransparent snake-like tactile and olfactory bionic sensor with reversibly stretchable properties

“…The nanowire array-based sensor outperformed conventional metal strain sensors in terms of both strain range and gauge factor (εo5%, gauge factor ≈2), 26 as well as most of the recently reported strain sensors based on carbon nanotubes (0.82 between 0 and 40% strain or 10-25 between 0 and 550% strain), 27 graphene (7.1 at 100% strain), 28 silver nanowire (14 at 30% strain), 29 hydrogel (1.51 at 1000% strain) 30 and ionic conductive fluid (0.348 ± 0.11 at 700% strain); 31 furthermore, the gauge factor is nearly 180 times higher than that recently reported for PANI nanowires. 16 Moreover, our PANI nanowire array-based sensor also showed a precise response independent of the test frequency (0.025-0.75 Hz) or strain rate under the application of 20% stretch-release strain cycles (Figure 2f). The stability of the sensor was also investigated by applying 2000 stretch-release cycles at 20% and 60% strain, at which the strain gauge factors are approximately 15 and 45.…”

“…Moreover, PANI is capable of sensing multiple stimuli, including biological, chemical, gas, temperature, humidity, strain and pressure, owing to its unique and controllable chemical and electrical properties. [13][14][15][16][17][18] Unfortunately, the typical formation of PANI thin films, based on spin or spray processes, is unable to produce stretchability because of the chain rigidity of PANI. Inspired by the scale-structured stretchable skin and sophisticated olfactory ability of snakes, a multifunctional electronic skin sensor is designed via the growth of bilayer PANI with a planar particulate film and vertically aligned nanowires on a thin polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) substrate.…”