Alignment of carbon iron into polydimethylsiloxane to create conductive composite with low percolation threshold and high piezoresistivity

Abstract

With the development of soft materials for applications in flexible tactile sensors, metal particles/insulated polymer composites have been studied for many years. This article proposes a method to prepare carbon iron particles (CIPs)/polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) conductive composite with low percolation threshold and highly piezoresistive stain sensitivity. CIPs-PDMS composites with various filler volume fraction were cured under a magnetic field over 1.0 T to create chain-like structure resulting in anisotropy of conductive materials. The electrical resistivity for the longitudinal direction were measured as a function of filler volume fraction to understand the electrical percolation behavior. In this study, the percolation threshold of CIPs-PDMS composite cured under a magnetic field can be as low as 0.1 vol.%, which is much less than most of those studies in particulate composites. Meanwhile, the effects of compressive strain on the electrical properties of CIPs-PDMS composites were also investigated. The strain sensitivity depends on filler volume fraction and decreases with the increasing of compressive strain. It has been found that the composites containing a small amount of CI particles curing under a magnetic field exhibit a high strain sensitivity of over 150. The microstructures were measured by using a scanning electron microscope (SEM), and the results were also reported in this paper.