High-resolution flexible temperature sensor based graphite-filled polyethylene oxide and polyvinylidene fluoride composites for body temperature monitoring

Abstract

Flexible and high accurate temperature sensors have great potential toward applications such as medical diagnosis and body temperature monitoring. Here, we demonstrated a flexible temperature sensor based on graphite-filled polyethylene oxide (PEO) and polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) composites exhibiting a high accuracy of 0.1 °C and high repeatability nearly 2000 times, in the sensing temperature range of 25–42 °C. Device performance is hardly affected in different curvature, which allows for conformal application to human skin. Especially, subtle temperature change on the skin surface was also measured to validate the accuracy and anti-interference ability. Under physiological conditions, the temperature sensor based on positive temperature coefficient showed a high-speed response time of 26 s with relatively simple fabrication technology. These results demonstrated the possibility and feasibility of fully using the sensors in body temperature sensing for medical use as well as sensing function of body temperature measuring.