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Highly sensitive and dynamically stable strain sensors based on porous-designed Fe nanowires/multi-walled carbon nanotubes with stable bi-conducting networks

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Abstract

Flexible sensors for high strain sensitivity and dynamic stability are important for the development of human-interactive and health-monitoring devices. However, establishing a stable conductive network with low-conductivity material filling that can resist tensile strain failure and achieve high device performance still faces significant challenges. Herein, a highly stretchable and sensitive strain sensor with strong dynamic stability and low conductive materials filling was fabricated based on highly conductive multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) and Fe nanowires (NWs) to construct a porous-designed bi-conducting network using a salt sacrificial template approach. The porous-designed Fe NW/MWCNT strain sensor (PFMS) with low material filling (3.6 wt.% Fe NWs and 10.6 wt.% MWCNTs) showed high sensitivity with a gauge factor (GF) of 134.98 (strain range 0–22%) and 569.37 (strain range 22%–60%), which is much higher compared with the pure MWCNT strain sensor with a GF of 7.46. This is attributed to the significant change in the contact area and contact resistance of the Fe NW/MWCNT bi-conducting network during tensile strain. In addition, the PFMS exhibited high repetitive stability over 2000 stretching-releasing cycles. When attached to the human body, the PFMS functions as a health-monitoring device, that can accurately distinguish human motions such as the bending of fingers, knees, and elbows. Finally, the proposed strategy pens a novel avenue for constructing porous conductive networks using polymer composites and is highly competitive for developing high-performance strain sensors.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Automation, Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Chongqing, 400065, China

    PingAn Yang, ZhongBang Liu, Rui Li, Xin Huang & ZhiHao Zhou

  2. School of Advanced Manufacturing Engineering, Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Chongqing, 400065, China

    JiuFei Luo

  3. School of Optoelectronic Engineering, Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Chongqing, 400065, China

    Yi Lu

  4. College of Engineering and Technology, Zunyi Normal College, Zunyi, 563006, China

    Qiang Zhang

Authors
  1. PingAn Yang
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  2. ZhongBang Liu
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  3. JiuFei Luo
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  4. Rui Li
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  5. Yi Lu
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  6. Xin Huang
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  7. Qiang Zhang
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  8. ZhiHao Zhou
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to ZhiHao Zhou.

Additional information

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 61901073), the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation funded project (Grant Nos. 2021MD703936 and 2022MD713695), the Special Foundation of Chongqing Postdoctoral Research Project (Grant No. 2021XM3032), the Science and Technology Research Program of Chongqing Municipal Education Commission (Grant No. KJQN202100617), the Innovation Research Group of Universities in Chongqing (Grant No. CXQT20016), and a cooperation project between undergraduate universities in Chongqing and institutions affiliated with the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. HZ2021018).

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The supporting information is available online at tech.scichina.com and link.springer.com. The supporting materials are published as submitted, without typesetting or editing. The responsibility for scientific accuracy and content remains entirely with the authors.

Electronic Supplementary Information

11431_2022_2162_MOESM1_ESM.doc

Highly Sensitive and Dynamically Stable Strain Sensors Based on Porous-Designed Fe Nanowires/Multi-Walled Carbon Nanotubes with Stable Bi-Conducting Networks

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Yang, P., Liu, Z., Luo, J. et al. Highly sensitive and dynamically stable strain sensors based on porous-designed Fe nanowires/multi-walled carbon nanotubes with stable bi-conducting networks. Sci. China Technol. Sci. 65, 2990–2999 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11431-022-2162-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11431-022-2162-8

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