Multifunctional Slippery Polydimethylsiloxane/Carbon Nanotube Composite Strain Sensor with Excellent Liquid Repellence and Anti-Icing/Deicing Performance.

Ke Liu,Alamusi Lee,Rui Zou,Siyuan Zhang,Chao Yang,Qibo Deng,Yao Wang,Ning Hu

doi:10.3390/polym14030409

Abstract

In this paper, a multifunctional slippery polydimethylsiloxane/carbon nanotube composite strain sensor (SPCCSS) is prepared using a facile template method. Benefitting from the slippery surface, the SPCCSS shows excellent liquid repellence properties, which can repel various liquids such as oil, cola, yogurt, hot water and some organic solvents. Meanwhile, the SPCCSS has a large strain sensing range (up to 100%), good sensitivity (GF = 3.3) and stable response with 500 cyclic stretches under 20% strain. Moreover, it is also demonstrated that the SPCCSS displays outstanding corrosion resistance (from pH = 1 to pH = 14) and anti-icing (8 min at −20 °C)/photothermal deicing (104 s with NIR power density of 1 W/cm2) properties, broadening its application in extreme acid, alkali and low-temperature conditions. Therefore, the multifunctional SPCCSS with the liquid repellence, anti-corrosion, and anti-icing/deicing properties has potential applications in wearable human motion monitoring tools under complex harsh environments.

Highlights

Academic Editor: Teofil JesionowskiFlexible strain sensors possess excellent stretchability, flexibility and biocompatibility; it has wide potential application in human motion detection [1,2], healthy monitoring [3,4], and e-skin [5,6], etc
The flexible strain sensor is mainly made by conductive polymer composite, which consists of conductive fillers and polymer matrix
Was ultrasonically dissolved in xylene solution for 20 min to form a dispersion solution uniformly, and 15 g of PDMS and 8 g of silicone oil were added into the carbon nanotube (CNT) solution

Summary

Introduction

Academic Editor: Teofil JesionowskiFlexible strain sensors possess excellent stretchability, flexibility and biocompatibility; it has wide potential application in human motion detection [1,2], healthy monitoring [3,4], and e-skin [5,6], etc. When the flexible strain sensor is exposed to severe environments including wet, corrosion, low temperature and so forth, the polymer matrix and conductive pathway are damaged, contributing to the decrease in sensing reliability of the strain sensor and even loss of the sensing property completely. To protect it from harsh environments, many important approaches have been put forward to construct a superhydrophobic flexible strain sensor, which has both low surface energy and large surface roughness with a water contact angle (CA) more than 150◦ and a sliding angle (SA) less than 10◦ [9,10,11,12,13]. Preety et al designed a superhydrophobic conductive composite by spraying the SiO2 /PDMS solution onto the surface of the embedded

Methods

Results

Conclusion