Polymer composite strain sensor based on dielectrophoretically aligned tellurium nanorods

Abstract

A novel sensor set-up for mechanical sensing based on a polymer composite with aligned filler material is presented. In our approach tellurium nanorods are aligned by dielectrophoresis and embedded in a thin layer of a visco-elastic polymer on top of an elastomeric polymer foil. The stretching of the polymer foil increases the gap between neighboring particles, which leads to a significant increase in resistance. The highest reproducible resistance change is about 180% at a strain of 1%. Additionally, it is possible to perform direction-sensitive measurements due to the anisotropic alignment of the conducting network.