A Fabric-Based Strain Sensor with a Microbridge Structure and the Supercapacitor-Powered Integrated Sensing System

作者：Yuanlong Ding, Jun Cao, Haohao Dong, Xinghai Zhou, Ying Wang, Jun Yan, Hong Li, Yongtao Yu, Jiangning Fan, Yanzhi Fan, Dongyan Li, Yongping Liao · 发表于：ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces · 年份：2024 · DOI：10.1021/acsami.4c05753 · 被引用次数：18 · 研究领域：Advanced Sensor and Energy Harvesting Materials、Conducting polymers and applications、Gas Sensing Nanomaterials and Sensors

Developing fabric-based strain sensors with high sensitivity and stability is in high demand for wearable electronics. Herein, carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and polypyrrole (PPy) are coated on a thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) fabric as strain sensors. A microbridge structure, in which CNT bridges the stretching-induced cracks, has been designed for the TPU-CNT-PPy strain sensor. The microbridge structure can significantly enhance the electrical resilience, ensuring the improved sensitivity and stability of strain sensors. As a result, our TPU-CNT-PPy strain sensors deliver high sensitivity (GF = 231.5) with a broad working range (150%) and fast response and recovery time (166/195 ms). In addition, our TPU-CNT-PPy could also be used as flexible electrodes of the microsupercapacitors (MSCs) as a power supplier for the integrated sensing system. The TPU-CNT-PPy-based MSCs exhibit a high specific capacitance (460.3 mF cm –2 at 0.5 mA cm –2 ) and excellent cycling stability (96.69% capacitance retention for 10,000 charge/discharge cycles). Finally, we demonstrated an integrated sensing system using TPU-CNT-PPy as both MSCs and strain sensors, where the current signals of the sensors could be well detected via Bluetooth. This study offers a microbridge strategy to fabricate strain sensors with high sensitivity and stability and develops an integrated sensing system for the actual applications of wearable electronics.