Flexible strain sensors based on CNTs/PDMS nanocomposite

Abstract

The development of flexible, stretchable and electrically conductive nanocomposite material based flexible strain sensors has potential applications in many areas, such as human motion detection and soft robotics. In this work, a highly efficient method was proposed to enhance the flexibility and dynamic durability of a presented strain sensor based on carbon nanotubes/ polydimethylsiloxane (CNTs/PDMS) nanocomposite. The presented strain sensor showed high dynamic durability and repeatability during the stretching/releasing test cycle. Additionally, it was found that the hysteresis performance of sensor would be improved by decreasing the width of strain sensors. In particular, the sensitivity (i.e., Gauge factor), response time and recovery time are 1.11, 300ms and 14s, respectively. Furthermore, the relationship between resistivity and size of strain sensors was discussed based on the Ohm’s law. The variation of resistivity was attribute to the distribution of the internal conductive paths formed by CNTs in the CNTs/PDMS nanocomposite during the stretching/releasing test cycles, which implies that CNT connection structures and stretch-induced crakes are potential factors to affect the performance of CNTs/PDMS based strain sensors.