scholarly journals A Laser Scribed Graphene Oxide and Polyimide Hybrid Strain Sensor

2018 ◽  
Vol 778 ◽  
pp. 169-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shayan Naveed ◽  
Tayyaba Malik ◽  
Muhammad Muneer ◽  
Mohammad Ali Mohammad

Strain sensors are devices used in applications such as electronic skin, prosthetic limbs, and e-textile applications, etc., for the purpose of measuring the physical elongation of a desired structure under a given or applied force. An artificial throat, using a strain sensor, was recently developed as an aid for speech impaired individuals. Strain sensors have been developed using graphene and polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), with a reported gauge factor ranging from (5~120). We have developed a strain sensor through laser scribing. Using laser scribing is a recent and facile technology, used for printed electronics. Complex geometries and patterns can be drawn very easily using this method. The laser scribing method relies on the property of certain materials to form a graphene-like conductive material upon irradiation by lasers. Polyimide and graphene oxide (GO) are two such materials.In these experiments, 2×2 cm sheet of polyimide were taken and printed 1×1 cm box on the sheet using a laser patterning setup of 450 nm wavelength. Graphene oxide solution was drop-casted on the reduced polyimide sheet of 1×1cm, to increase its sensitivity, and then the drop-casted graphene oxide was reduced using the same laser. The strain sensor was characterized by a micro-strain testing machine. The normalized resistance was plotted against strain and the gauge factor was calculated. The effect of the laser intensity was investigated and different gauge factors were calculated by varying the intensity of the laser. The gauge factors were found to be in the range of 49-54 and was compared with the polyimide reduced strain sensor (without drop-casting the GO).

Nanomaterials ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 1701
Author(s):  
Ken Suzuki ◽  
Ryohei Nakagawa ◽  
Qinqiang Zhang ◽  
Hideo Miura

In this study, a basic design of area-arrayed graphene nanoribbon (GNR) strain sensors was proposed to realize the next generation of strain sensors. To fabricate the area-arrayed GNRs, a top-down approach was employed, in which GNRs were cut out from a large graphene sheet using an electron beam lithography technique. GNRs with widths of 400 nm, 300 nm, 200 nm, and 50 nm were fabricated, and their current-voltage characteristics were evaluated. The current values of GNRs with widths of 200 nm and above increased linearly with increasing applied voltage, indicating that these GNRs were metallic conductors and a good ohmic junction was formed between graphene and the electrode. There were two types of GNRs with a width of 50 nm, one with a linear current–voltage relationship and the other with a nonlinear one. We evaluated the strain sensitivity of the 50 nm GNR exhibiting metallic conduction by applying a four-point bending test, and found that the gauge factor of this GNR was about 50. Thus, GNRs with a width of about 50 nm can be used to realize a highly sensitive strain sensor.


Materials ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (9) ◽  
pp. 1469 ◽  
Author(s):  
Orathai Tangsirinaruenart ◽  
George Stylios

This research presents an investigation of novel textile-based strain sensors and evaluates their performance. The electrical resistance and mechanical properties of seven different textile sensors were measured. The sensors are made up of a conductive thread, composed of silver plated nylon 117/17 2-ply, 33 tex and 234/34 4-ply, 92 tex and formed in different stitch structures (304, 406, 506, 605), and sewn directly onto a knit fabric substrate (4.44 tex/2 ply, with 2.22, 4.44 and 7.78 tex spandex and 7.78 tex/2 ply, with 2.22 and 4.44 tex spandex). Analysis of the effects of elongation with respect to resistance indicated the ideal configuration for electrical properties, especially electrical sensitivity and repeatability. The optimum linear working range of the sensor with minimal hysteresis was found, and the sensor’s gauge factor indicated that the sensitivity of the sensor varied significantly with repeating cycles. The electrical resistance of the various stitch structures changed significantly, while the amount of drift remained negligible. Stitch 304 2-ply was found to be the most suitable for strain movement. This sensor has a wide working range, well past 50%, and linearity (R2 is 0.984), low hysteresis (6.25% ΔR), good gauge factor (1.61), and baseline resistance (125 Ω), as well as good repeatability (drift in R2 is −0.0073). The stitch-based sensor developed in this research is expected to find applications in garments as wearables for physiological wellbeing monitoring such as body movement, heart monitoring, and limb articulation measurement.


2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angelica Campigotto ◽  
Stephane Leahy ◽  
Ayan Choudhury ◽  
Guowei Zhao ◽  
Yongjun Lai

A novel, inexpensive, and easy-to-use strain sensor using polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS)  was developed. The sensor consists of a microchannel that is partially filled with a coloured liquid and embedded in a piece of PDMS. A finite element model was developed to optimize the geometry of the microchannel to achieve higher sensitivity. The highest gauge factor that was measured experimentally was 41. The gauge factor was affected by the microchannel’s square cross-sectional area, the number of basic units in the microchannel, and the inlet and outlet configuration. As a case study, the developed strain sensors were used to measure the rotation angle of the wrist and finger joints.


Coatings ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (8) ◽  
pp. 792 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hsuan-Ling Kao ◽  
Cheng-Lin Cho ◽  
Li-Chun Chang ◽  
Chun-Bing Chen ◽  
Wen-Hung Chung ◽  
...  

A fully inkjet-printed strain sensor based on carbon nanotubes (CNTs) was fabricated in this study for microstrain and microcrack detection. Carbon nanotubes and silver films were used as the sensing layer and conductive layer, respectively. Inkjet-printed CNTs easily undergo agglomeration due to van der Waals forces between CNTs, resulting in uneven films. The uniformity of CNT film affects the electrical and mechanical properties. Multi-pass printing and pattern rotation provided precise quantities of sensing materials, enabling the realization of uniform CNT films and stable resistance. Three strain sensors printed eight-layer CNT film by unidirectional printing, rotated by 180° and 90° were compared. The low density on one side of eight-layer CNT film by unidirectional printing results in more disconnection and poor connectivity with the silver film, thereby, significantly increasing the resistance. For 180° rotation eight-layer strain sensors, lower sensitivity and smaller measured range were found because strain was applied to the uneven CNT film resulting in non-uniform strain distribution. Lower resistance and better strain sensitivity was obtained for eight-layer strain sensor with 90° rotation because of uniform film. Given the uniform surface morphology and saturated sheet resistance of the 20-layer CNT film, the strain performance of the 20-layer CNT strain sensor was also examined. Excluding the permanent destruction of the first strain, 0.76% and 1.05% responses were obtained for the 8- and 20-layer strain sensors under strain between 0% and 3128 µε, respectively, which demonstrates the high reproducibility and recoverability of the sensor. The gauge factor (GF) of 20-layer strain sensor was found to be 2.77 under strain from 71 to 3128 µε, which is higher than eight-layer strain sensor (GF = 1.93) due to the uniform surface morphology and stable resistance. The strain sensors exhibited a highly linear and reversible behavior under strain of 71 to 3128 µε, so that the microstrain level could be clearly distinguished. The technology of the fully inkjet-printed CNT-based microstrain sensor provides high reproducibility, stability, and rapid hardness detection.


2010 ◽  
Vol 2010 ◽  
pp. 1-5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fernando Martinez ◽  
Gregorio Obieta ◽  
Ion Uribe ◽  
Tomasz Sikora ◽  
Estibalitz Ochoteco

The design and characterization of polymer-based self-standing flexible strain sensors are presented in this work. Properties as lightness and flexibility make them suitable for the measurement of strain in applications related with wearable electronics such as robotics or rehabilitation devices. Several sensors have been fabricated to analyze the influence of size and electrical conductivity on their behavior. Elongation and applied charge were precisely controlled in order to measure different parameters as electrical resistance, gauge factor (GF), hysteresis, and repeatability. The results clearly show the influence of size and electrical conductivity on the gauge factor, but it is also important to point out the necessity of controlling the hysteresis and repeatability of the response for precision-demanding applications.


2016 ◽  
Vol 15 (05n06) ◽  
pp. 1660005
Author(s):  
Gaurav Sapra ◽  
Renu Vig ◽  
Manu Sharma

Carbon nanotubes (CNT) is turning out to be a replacement to all the existing traditional sensors due to their high gauge factor, multidirectional sensing capability, high flexibility, low mass density, high dynamic range and high sensitivity to strains at nano and macro- scales. The strain sensitivity of CNT-based strain sensors depends on number of parameters; quality and quantity of CNT used, type of polymer used, deposition and dispersion technique adopted and also on environmental conditions. Due to all these parameters, the piezoresistive behavior of CNT is diversified and it needs to be explored. This paper theoretically analyses the strain sensitivity of CNT-based strain sensors. The strain sensitivity response of CNT strain sensor is a result of change in total resistance of CNT network with respect to applied strain. The total resistance of CNT network consists of intrinsic resistance and inter-tube resistance. It has been found that the change in intrinsic resistance under strain is due to the variation of bandgap of individual, which depends on the chirality of the tube and it varies exponentially with strain. The inter-tube resistance of CNT network changes nonlinearly due to change in distance between neighboring CNTs with respect to applied strain. As the distance [Formula: see text] between CNTs increases due to applied strain, tunneling resistance [Formula: see text] increases nonlinearly in exponential manner. When the concentration of CNTs in composite is close to percolation threshold, then the change of inter-tube resistances is more dominant than intrinsic resistance. At percolation threshold, the total resistance of CNT networks changes nonlinearly and this effect of nonlinearity is due to tunneling effect. The strain sensitivity of CNT-based strain sensors also varies nonlinearly with the change in temperature. For the change of temperature from [Formula: see text]C to 50[Formula: see text]C, there is more than 100% change in strain sensitivity of CNT/polymer composite strain sensor. This change is mainly due to the infiltration of polymer into CNTs.


Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (7) ◽  
pp. 2531
Author(s):  
Yelin Ko ◽  
Ji-seon Kim ◽  
Chi Cuong Vu ◽  
Jooyong Kim

Flexible strain sensors are receiving a great deal of interest owing to their prospective applications in monitoring various human activities. Among various efforts to enhance the sensitivity of strain sensors, pre-crack generation has been well explored for elastic polymers but rarely on textile substrates. Herein, a highly sensitive textile-based strain sensor was fabricated via a dip-coat-stretch approach: a polyester woven elastic band was dipped into ink containing single-walled carbon nanotubes coated with silver paste and pre-stretched to generate prebuilt cracks on the surface. Our sensor demonstrated outstanding sensitivity (a gauge factor of up to 3550 within a strain range of 1.5–5%), high stability and durability, and low hysteresis. The high performance of this sensor is attributable to the excellent elasticity and woven structure of the fabric substrate, effectively generating and propagating the prebuilt cracks. The strain sensor integrated into firefighting gloves detected detailed finger angles and cyclic finger motions, demonstrating its capability for subtle human motion monitoring. It is also noteworthy that this novel strategy is a very quick, straightforward, and scalable method of fabricating strain sensors, which is extremely beneficial for practical applications.


Nanoscale ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (28) ◽  
pp. 13599-13606 ◽  
Author(s):  
Binghao Liang ◽  
Zhiqiang Lin ◽  
Wenjun Chen ◽  
Zhongfu He ◽  
Jing Zhong ◽  
...  

A highly stretchable and sensitive strain sensor based on a gradient carbon nanotube was developed. The strain sensors show an unprecedented combination of both high sensitivity (gauge factor = 13.5) and ultra-stretchability (>550%).


Nanomaterials ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (9) ◽  
pp. 2333
Author(s):  
Huiying Shen ◽  
Huizhen Ke ◽  
Jingdong Feng ◽  
Chenyu Jiang ◽  
Qufu Wei ◽  
...  

Owing to the multi-dimensional complexity of human motions, traditional uniaxial strain sensors lack the accuracy in monitoring dynamic body motions working in different directions, thus multidirectional strain sensors with excellent electromechanical performance are urgently in need. Towards this goal, in this work, a stretchable biaxial strain sensor based on double elastic fabric (DEF) was developed by incorporating carboxylic multi-walled carbon nanotubes(c-MWCNTs) and polypyrrole (PPy) into fabric through simple, scalable soaking and adsorption-oxidizing methods. The fabricated DEF/c-MWCNTs/PPy strain sensor exhibited outstanding anisotropic strain sensing performance, including relatively high sensitivity with the maximum gauge factor (GF) of 5.2, good stretchability of over 80%, fast response time < 100 ms, favorable electromechanical stability, and durability for over 800 stretching–releasing cycles. Moreover, applications of DEF/c-MWCNTs/PPy strain sensor for wearable devices were also reported, which were used for detecting human subtle motions and dynamic large-scale motions. The unconventional applications of DEF/c-MWCNTs/PPy strain sensor were also demonstrated by monitoring complex multi-degrees-of-freedom synovial joint motions of human body, such as neck and shoulder movements, suggesting that such materials showed a great potential to be applied in wearable electronics and personal healthcare monitoring.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lu Liu ◽  
Libo Wang ◽  
Xuqing Liu ◽  
Wenfeng Yuan ◽  
Mengmeng Yuan ◽  
...  

Abstract Although 2D nanomaterials such as MXene Ti3C2Tx have been used in flexible electronic devices for their unique properties such as high conductivity, excellent mechanical performance, flexibility, and good hydrophilicity, less research has focused on of MXene-based cotton fabric strain sensors. Moreover, fabrication of wearable strain sensors with a low cost, high sensitivity, good biocompatibility, and broad sensing range is still a challenge. In this work, a high-performance wearable strain sensor composed of 2D MXene d-Ti3C2Tx nanomaterials and cotton fabric is reported. As the active material in the sensor, MXene d-Ti3C2Tx exhibited an excellent conductivity and hydrophilicity and adhered well to the fabric fibers by electrostatic adsorption. Due to the unique structure of the fabric substrate and the properties of MXene sheets, the fabricated pressure sensor achieved a high sensitivity. The gauge factor of the MXene@cotton fabric strain sensor reached up to 4.11 within the strain range of 15 %. Meanwhile, the sensor possessed high durability (>500 cycles) and a low strain detection limit of 0.3%. Finally, the encapsulated strain sensor was used to detect subtle or large body movements and exhibited a rapid response. This study shows that the MXene@cotton fabric strain sensor reported here have great potential for use in flexible, comfortable, and wearable devices for health monitoring and motion detection.


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