A facile and cost-effective approach to fabrication of high performance pressure sensor based on graphene-textile network structure

Abstract

High performance flexible pressure sensors have received tremendous attention due to the potential applications in wearable electronics and humanoid robotics. Herein, a low-cost, time-saving fabrication strategy is reported to efficiently construct highly sensitive and scalable pressure sensors based on graphene-textile. The flexible pressure sensor was prepared through a dip coating approach where the graphene ink was used as the active material and textile with ordered network structure, serves as the flexible support matrix. By increasing the number of layers of the textile, the pressure sensor could achieve a high linear sensitivity value of 0.23 kPa−1, a broad pressure range from 0 to 140 kPa, and a durability over 800 cycles. It was found that the network structure of the graphene-textile contributed to the enhancement of the sensing performance due to the piezoresistive effect resulting from the deformation of conductive graphene-textile. Moreover, by virtue of its exceptional properties, it is demonstrate that the high performance flexible pressure sensor could be further used to detect human physiological signals, such as wrist pulse, finger press detection and walking state monitoring, indicating its promising potential to flexible and wearable electronics.