Stretchable and Designable Textile Pattern Strain Sensors Based on Graphene Decorated Conductive Nylon Filaments

Abstract

Flexible sensors with stretchable and wearable characteristics have boosted wide interest in human motion detection and physiological signal monitoring. However, the majority of current sensors suffer from the lack of seamlessly integrated with clothes substrates, hindering their applications as “real” wearable devices. Herein, a facile low‐cost and scalable continuous capillary dip coating route is employed to deposit graphene inks onto nylon filaments to obtain graphene decorated nylon conductive filaments. The filaments exhibit noticeable promotion in electrical conductivity with remarkable laundry durability, and the electrical conductivity of our filaments could be up to 6.43 and 2.78 S m−1 before and after washing 10 times, respectively. Two kinds of conventional textile formation techniques, sewing and knitting, are utilized to form various textile pattern strain sensors from the conductive filaments as the building blocks, such as the linear‐type, knitted‐loop‐type, snail‐coil‐type sewed sensors and the tubular knitted fabric sensors respectively. The textile sensors with different patterns exhibited various sensing response, the knitted‐loop‐type sensor could reach the maximum strain 45.69% while the linear‐type one arrives at 13.64%. In addition, the above strain sensors exhibit high sensitivity and repeatability when monitoring the limb movement and human breathing.

Review of Graphene-Based Textile Strain Sensors, with Emphasis on Structure Activity Relationship

“…Nevertheless, the method of combining graphene-based materials with yarns through dip-coating [ 58 , 59 , 65 , 66 , 67 , 68 , 70 ], layer-by-layer (LbL) assembly [ 60 , 61 , 62 , 63 ] is more widely used. Hamid Souri et al [ 58 ] coat natural fiber yarns with graphene nanoplatelets (GNPs) and carbon black (CB) to obtain conductive yarns.…”

“…The performance of various graphene-based staple and filament yarn strain sensors are summarized in Table 2 . It can be found that the GF absolute value of staple and filament yarn strain sensors present different variation trends with the increase of strain [ 59 , 65 , 66 , 68 , 70 ]. In the process of stretching, yarn deformation can be divided into two processes.…”

“…One is to prepare conductive textiles via spinning and weaving techniques [ 44 , 45 , 46 , 47 , 48 , 49 , 50 , 51 , 52 , 53 ]. The other is depositing graphene-based materials on the surface of textiles [ 17 , 54 , 55 , 56 , 57 , 58 , 59 , 60 , 61 , 62 , 63 , 64 , 65 , 66 , 67 , 68 , 69 , 70 , 71 , 72 , 73 , 74 , 75 , 76 , 77 , 78 , 79 , 80 , 81 , 82 , 83 , 84 , 85 , 86 , 87 , 88 , 89 , 90 , 91 , 92 , 93 , 94 , 95 , 96 , 97 ].…”

“…Graphene-based textile strain sensors are mainly used to sense a wide range of motions, from small (breathing, facial expressions, vocal sounds, coughing, and human pulse, etc.) to large (human limbs) [ 45 , 46 , 50 , 51 , 52 , 57 , 58 , 59 , 61 , 62 , 64 , 65 , 66 , 68 , 70 , 71 , 72 , 76 , 78 , 79 , 80 , 83 , 84 , 85 , 86 , 87 , 88 , 91 , 94 , 95 , 96 , 97 ]. Based on these developments, we summarize challenges and development prospects of graphene-based textile strain sensors, providing meaningful guidance and direction for future research.…”

A Facile Strategy to Fabricate Antistatic Polyamide 1012/Multi-Walled Carbon Nanotube Pipes for Fuel Delivery Applications

“…In order to achieve a conductive polyamide, several methods have been adopted in recent years, which can be classified into two types according to the categories of antistatic agents. First, conductive nanoparticles [ 8 , 9 ], including carbon nanotubes [ 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 ], graphene [ 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 ] and carbon black [ 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 ], have been popular for use in fabricating polyamide-based nanocomposites. Here, enhancing the interfacial adhesion between nanopowders and the corresponding matrix has attracted a great deal of attention as it determines the ultimate properties of the composites.…”