Wearable Pressure Sensors Based on Carbonized Graphene Coated Waste Paper Aerogel

Abstract

Graphene is complexed with cellulose fibers to construct 3D aerogels, which is generally considered to be an environmentally friendly and simple strategy to achieve wide sensing, high sensitivity and low detection of wearable piezoresistive pressure sensors. Here, graphene is incorporated into waste paper fibers with cellulose as the main component to prepare graphene coated waste paper aerogel (GWA) using a simple “filtration-oven drying” method under atmospheric pressure. The GWA was further annealed to obtain the carbonized graphene coated waste paper aerogel (C-GWA) to achieve low density and excellent resilience. The result shows that the C-GWA has a rough outer surface due to the 3D structure formed by interpenetrated fibers and the carbon skeleton with wrinkles. The sensor based on GCA shows low density (25mg/cm3), a wide detection range of 0-132 kPa, an ultra-low detection limit of 2.5 Pa (a green bean, ≈ 53.4 mg), and a high sensitivity of 31.6 kPa− 1. In addition, the sensor based on C-GWA with the excellent performance can be used to detect human motions including the pulse of the human body, cheek blowing and bending of human joints. The result indicates that the sensor based on C-GWA shows great potential for wearable electronic products.