Abstract
In recent years, flexible electronic equipment has attracted considerable attention. Textile fabrics are widely used in manufacturing flexible pressure sensors because of their high flexibility and toughness. However, ordinary fabrics are electrically insulated, which limits their sensitivity to pressure. In this paper, cotton fabrics (CFs) with high conductivity were prepared by a simple two-step method. Firstly, the reduced graphene oxide (RGO) suspension was deposited on CFs by vacuum filtration, and then the copper (Cu) and nickel (Ni) films were coated on the surface by magnetic filtered cathodic vacuum arc deposition technology (FVACD). The copper/reduced graphene oxide cotton (Cu/RGO/CF) and nickel/reduced graphene oxide cotton (Ni/RGO/CF) prepared by this method have good conductivity with a minimum resistance of 2 Ω/sq. Moreover, the RGO is closely combined with the metal layer, maintaining high conductivity after repeated washing. Highly conductive CFs can be applied to piezoresistive sensors. The research results show that the piezoresistive sensor based on composite conductive CFs has the advantages of high sensitivity, wide range (0–0.35 MPa), fast response and high stability. In addition, the sensor can realize real-time monitoring of human motion (such as the knee, wrist bending). In general, the effective washability and high conductivity of CFs coated with metal film and RGO have been successfully verified, making it one of the promising candidates for application in wearable electronic devices.
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Chen, F., Liu, H., Xu, M. et al. Flexible cotton fabric with stable conductive coatings for piezoresistive sensors. Cellulose 28, 10025–10038 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10570-021-04171-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10570-021-04171-4