Issue 1, 2018

Sliced graphene foam films for dual-functional wearable strain sensors and switches

Abstract

The demand for wearable sensors is growing in many emerging fields, such as health monitoring, human-machine interfaces, robotics and personalized medicine. Here, we report the integration of skin-mountable, flexible, stretchable, dual-functional sensors and switches together with silicon-based electronics to create a novel healthcare system. We employ a facile approach to design highly stretchable graphene foam (GF)/PDMS composite films with tunable sensitivities and switching capabilities by simply controlling the thickness of GF. The GF/PDMS composite films deliver a high gauge factor of 24 at a 10% strain, tunable stretchability up to 70% and an excellent on/off switching ratio on the order of 1000. The highly reversible switching capability of the composite films is realized by identifying abnormal resistance changes at strains beyond a threshold value. To bridge the gap between signal transmission, wireless communication and post-processing in wearable devices, the sensors are combined with electronics, allowing data transmission to a smartphone using a custom-developed application consisting of a user-friendly interface. The novel approaches reported here offer a wide range of practical applications, including medical diagnosis, health monitoring and patient healthcare.

Graphical abstract: Sliced graphene foam films for dual-functional wearable strain sensors and switches

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Communication
Submitted
14 Sep 2017
Accepted
30 Oct 2017
First published
30 Oct 2017

Nanoscale Horiz., 2018,3, 35-44

Sliced graphene foam films for dual-functional wearable strain sensors and switches

Q. Zheng, X. Liu, H. Xu, M. Cheung, Y. Choi, H. Huang, H. Lei, X. Shen, Z. Wang, Y. Wu, S. Y. Kim and J. Kim, Nanoscale Horiz., 2018, 3, 35 DOI: 10.1039/C7NH00147A

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