Improved Performance of Carbon Nanotube Based Strain Sensor

Abstract

Strain sensor has been used in variety of industrial applications for structural healthy monitoring and biological signal analysis. The fabrication of a highly sensitive strain sensors are underwent many complex and delicate processes, as many fabrication parameters and conditions must be keep equilibrium to achieve good sensor performance, such as high linearity and sensitivity, stable responsivity, fast response time, mechanical durability, and signal processing steps [1]. Carbon based-nano materials such as fullerene, carbon nanotube (CNTs), and graphene have been considered as sensing materials for optical sensor, chemical sensor, physical sensor and environmental sensor, which possess their own strengths and weakness. Especially, CNTs have been widely employed as sensing species for strain/pressure, gas, temperature, and humidity sensor in recent years. CNT-based sensors were generally fabricated by transferring the individual or bundles of CNTs to the substrates using spin-coating, spraying, dip coating, and inkjet printing methods [1-2]. On the other hand, spin-capable CNTs were reported previously, which simply make transparent conductive CNT webs, ribbon or yarns. The spin-capable CNT forest can give an easy and effective way to fabricate highly-aligned CNT yarn with high flexibility and a electrical conductivity for sensor applications [1-3]. In this paper, we present performance of the CNT yarn based strain sensor. Especially, CNT yarn was associated with stretchable polymers to apply tensile and compressive force. The experimental results reveal that CNT yarn with elastic rubber can be stretch up to 300 %. References Jung et al, J. Vac. Sci. Technol. 32 (2014), 04E107.Han et al. Microelectron. Eng., 168 (2017), 50-54.Jung et al., J. Sensors. Sci. & Tech,. 22 (2013), 315-320