Highly flexible fabric strain sensor based on graphene nanoplatelet–polyaniline nanocomposites for human gesture recognition

Abstract

ABSTRACTFlexible and wearable smart fabrics are becoming increasingly popular in healthcare and motion monitoring because of their potential applications in flexible and stretchable electronics. The integration of ordinary fabric with conductive fillers provides the fabric with new and intriguing functions, such as sensation. In this study, a low‐cost and efficient manner was used to fabricate a highly reliable conductive composite on fabric as an effective sensing material for gesture recognition. A strain sensor was fabricated by the incorporation of the highly conductive polyaniline (PANI) polymer, graphene nanoplatelets (GNPs), and a handful of silicon rubber (SR) onto elastic Lycra fabric via a spin‐coating method. We demonstrated that the fabric strain sensor was able to detect and monitor the bending angle of a human finger. By means of the covered structure of the PANI and GNPs, the composite fabric could bear a 40% maximum strain and possess the pleasant characteristic of stretching and bending. The gauge factor of the fabric strain sensor reached 67.3; this was an improvement of approximately four times compared to sensors without PANI microparticles. Finally, the superior performance of our strain sensor through the integration of five strain sensors on a glove for the motion detection of fingers was demonstrated. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2017, 134, 45340.