High-performance fingerprint bionic Ecoflex@AgNW/graphite/Pt hybrid strain sensor

Abstract

Wearable electronics have promising applications in human-machine interfaces due to their excellent flexibility, stretchability and human friendliness, and one of the key points of wearable electronics is to develop strain sensors with high sensitivity and working range. Herein, a high-performance Ecoflex@AgNW/graphite/Pt hybrid strain sensor was fabricated by suction filtrating, transferring and surface sputtering sequentially. The suction filtrating of AgNW and graphite dispersions on a wrinkle-shape Nylon filter, transferring of AgNW/graphite layer onto Ecoflex and further surface sputtering by Pt allow the construction of fingerprint bionic Ecoflex@AgNW/graphite/Pt hybrid strain sensor. The resultant fingerprint bionic hybrid strain sensor possesses high sensitivity of 2 064.1 at the strain of 140%–155%, a wide working range of 0–155%, a short response time (111 ms and 189 ms for tensile and releasing process) and excellent cyclic stability over 5 000 cycles. This study provides a universal technique for the preparation of strain sensors with promising applications in the field of next-generation intelligent wearable electronics.

Keywords

• Silver nanowire
• Graphite
• Strain sensor
• Ecoflex
• Sensitivity
• Working range