Controllable structure design for highly efficient and low cost fabrication of graphite based stretchable strain sensors

Abstract

Detecting dynamic multi-scale human motion requires the stretchable strain sensor to possess outstanding properties in every aspect. Unlike conventional strain sensors which focus on changing conductive materials and preparing methods, we introduce a novel mechanical structure design to control the performance of the strain sensor. The performance of the device can be simply controlled by the structural design rather than complex materials adjustments. So the complexity of the material preparation will be greatly reduced, thus promotes the materials translation and production. By designing an asymmetric structure of elastomer substrate and protect layer with different adjustable parameters, the strain distribution in elastomer can be controlled, which finally change the performance of strain sensors. The experiment results illustrated our works on changing the stretchablity and sensitivity of the strain sensors. Application tests on human body including subtle-scale strain like pulse and large-scale strain like elbow bending are conducted to prove our capability for multi-scale motion detecting.