Ultrasonically Patterning Silver Nanowire–Acrylate Composite for Highly Sensitive and Transparent Strain Sensors Based on Parallel Cracks

作者：Gui‐Shi Liu, Fan Yang, Jiazhe Xu, Yifei Kong, Huajian Zheng, Lei Chen, Yaofei Chen, Mei X. Wu, Bo‐Ru Yang, Yunhan Luo, Zhe Chen · 发表于：ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces · 年份：2020 · DOI：10.1021/acsami.0c11815 · 被引用次数：72 · 研究领域：Advanced Sensor and Energy Harvesting Materials、Tactile and Sensory Interactions、Conducting polymers and applications

It has long been a challenge to develop strain sensors with large gauge factor (GF) and high transparency for a broad strain range, to which field silver nanowires (AgNWs) have recently been applied. A dense nanowire (NW) network benefits achieving large stretchability, while a sparse NW network favors realizing high transparency and sensitive response to small strains. Herein, a patterned AgNW-acrylate composite-based strain sensor is developed to circumvent the above trade-off issue via a novel ultrasonication-based patterning technique, where a water-soluble, UV-curable acrylate composite was blended with AgNWs as both a tackifier and a photoresist for finely patterning dense AgNWs to achieve high transparency, while maintaining good stretchability. Moreover, the UV-cured AgNW-acrylate patterns are brittle and capable of forming parallel cracks which effectively evade the Poisson effect and thus increase the GF by more than 200-fold compared to that of the bulk AgNW film-based strain sensor. As a result, the AgNW-based strain sensor possesses a GF of ∼10,486 at a large strain (8%), a high transparency of 90.3%, and a maximum stretchability of 20% strain. The precise monitoring of human radial pulse and throat movements proves the great potential of this sensor as a measurement module for wearable healthcare systems.