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Smart Wearable, Highly Sensitive Pressure Sensor with MWNTs/PPy Aerogel Composite

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Abstract

The fabrication of highly sensitive, low-cost pressure sensors with reliable detection performance has received plenty of attention as there is an urgent need for body movement detection and monitoring devices in different fields. The MWNTs/PPy AG composite based piezo-resistive pressure sensor was fabricated using two coating processes. The first coating was with multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWNTs) and the second was poly-pyrrole (PPy) coating with in situ polymerization performed on commercially available aerogel (AG) as the substrate. The poly-dopamine (PDA) coating was applied as a substrate surface modification method to investigate its effect to enhance the conductivity, sensitivity and other performance aspects of MWNTs AG, PPy AG and MWNTs/PPy AG. An anionic surfactant, sodium dodecyl benzene sulfonate (SDBS) was used as the dispersing agent to prepare a homogeneously mixed MWNTs aqueous solution, which was then used as a scouring agent to remove an existed surface coating on the AG. The retained SDBS in the MWNTs AG worked as a dopant with pyrrole in situ polymerization to improve the conductivity. MWNTs/PPy AG pressure sensor shows high sensitivity (34.64 kPa−1 with 1 kPa), acceptable conductivity and good stability over 5000 continues pressure cycles in the 0.45–4 kPa pressure range. Lowest detection level of MWNTs/PPy AG was close to 0.2 kPa. The MWNTs/PPy AG composite shows promising performance in detecting human body movements in the medium pressure range, which is generally used for health care, rehabilitation and aesthetic purpose.

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Acknowledgment

The author would like to thank the financial support of the Natural Science Foundation of Tianjin (Grant No. 18JCYBJC18500), the Postdoctoral Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 2016M591390), the “Technology Winter Olympics” key special project special project of National Key Research and Development Program (2019YFF0302100). Moreover, the support given by The Department of School of Textile Science and Engineering, Tianjin Polytechnic University, Tianjin 300387, China is highly appreciated.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Textile Science and Engineering, Tiangong University, Tianjin, 300387, China

    Dilini S. W. Gunasekara, Yin He & Hao Liu

  2. Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology, Beijing, 100029, China

    Li Liu

  3. Institute of Smart Wearable Electronic Textiles, Tiangong University, Tianjin, 300387, China

    Yin He & Hao Liu

  4. Key Laboratory of Advanced Textile Composite Materials, Ministry of Education of China, Tianjin, 300387, China

    Yin He & Hao Liu

Authors
  1. Dilini S. W. Gunasekara
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  2. Yin He
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  3. Hao Liu
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  4. Li Liu
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Correspondence to Hao Liu or Li Liu.

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Gunasekara, D.S.W., He, Y., Liu, H. et al. Smart Wearable, Highly Sensitive Pressure Sensor with MWNTs/PPy Aerogel Composite. Fibers Polym 22, 2102–2111 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12221-021-0787-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12221-021-0787-2

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