A wearable and sensitive graphene-cotton based pressure sensor for human physiological signals monitoring

Ping Li,Xiangyang Zhou,Yulong Zhao,Mingzhi Yu,Zhuangde Jiang,Zhen Li,Libo Zhao

doi:10.1038/s41598-019-50997-1

Ping Li, Xiangyang Zhou + Show 5 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-50997-1

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Journal: Scientific Reports	Publication Date: Oct 8, 2019
Citations: 38	License type: open-access

Affiliation: Xi'an Jiaotong University, Beihang University

Abstract

Cotton fiber is the most commonly used fabric in textiles and clothing. As compared to inorganic materials like foam, sponge and paper, cotton fibers boast higher levels of flexibility and toughness, which makes it more durable and be better integrated with clothes. In this study, a conductive cotton fiber material modified by reduced graphene oxide (rGO) was prepared, and applied in pressure sensor. The highest sensitivity of the pressure sensor constructed is 0.21 kPa−1, and the pressure range covers up to 500 kPa, which demonstrates a combination of fine sensitivity and broader pressure range. The pressure sensor developed in this study demonstrates great performance in real-time monitoring of human physiological signals like pulse, breath rate and speech recognition, boasting great application value in wearable electronics and smart clothing.

Highlights

With the rapid development of robotics technology and wearable electronics in recent years, flexible pressure sensors widely applied in e-skins and wearable devices have come under the spotlight of a great number of researchers[1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11]
Www.nature.com/scientificreports was achieved by virtue of high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). These results show that the pressure sensor based on reduced graphene oxide (rGO) modified cotton proposed in this study boasts great potential in application in wearable electronics especially in smart clothing
The results demonstrate that with high sensitivity and good reliability, the conductive cotton based pressure sensor can be well applied in speech recognition and other fields like human-computer interaction

Summary

Introduction

With the rapid development of robotics technology and wearable electronics in recent years, flexible pressure sensors widely applied in e-skins and wearable devices have come under the spotlight of a great number of researchers[1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11]. Lou et al reported an rGO wrapped P(VDF-TrFE) 3D nanofibers based pressure sensor, whose measuring sensitivity was 15.6 kPa−1 and the detection limit was as low as 1.2 Pa30. The cotton fibers can form a 3D-network microstructure, and cotton is the most commonly used material in textile production, which facilitates its integration with clothes and wearable devices. By virtue of a simple dipping and annealing process, a conductive cotton fibers material modified by rGO nanosheets was prepared and used to fabricate a novel flexible pressure sensor. Was achieved by virtue of high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) These results show that the pressure sensor based on rGO modified cotton proposed in this study boasts great potential in application in wearable electronics especially in smart clothing

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