Abstract
In order to replace nonrenewable resources and decrease electronic waste disposal, there is a rapidly rising demand for the utilization of reproducible and degradable biopolymers in flexible electronics. Natural biopolymers have many remarkable characteristics, including light weight, excellent mechanical properties, biocompatibility, non-toxicity, low cost, etc. Thanks to these superior merits, natural functional biopolymers can be designed and optimized for the development of high-performance flexible electronic devices. Herein, we provide an insightful overview of the unique structures, properties and applications of biopolymers for electronic skins (e-skins) and flexible strain sensors. The relationships between properties and sensing performances of biopolymers-based sensors are also investigated. The functional design strategies and fabrication technologies for biopolymers-based flexible sensors are proposed. Furthermore, the research progresses of biopolymers-based sensors with various functions are described in detail. Finally, we provide some useful viewpoints and future prospects of developing biopolymers-based flexible sensors.
Highlights
Flexible and wearable electronics devices have shown tremendous application potential in the fields of Internet of Things (IoT), sensor, energy, biomedical systems, artificial intelligence (AI) and smart robots [1,2,3]
We summarize the recent development of natural biopolymers with various nanostructures as functional and sensing materials in flexible electronics
Other materials such as carbon nanotubes (CNTs), carbon black (CB), conductive polymers, and graphene are used in combined with chitosan to fabricate the flexible strain sensors [88,89,90,91,92]
Summary
Flexible and wearable electronics devices have shown tremendous application potential in the fields of Internet of Things (IoT), sensor, energy, biomedical systems, artificial intelligence (AI) and smart robots [1,2,3]. Multiple flexible conductive materials, for instance, metal nanoparticles and metal oxides [10,11], one dimension (1D) carbon nanotubes (CNTs) [12,13], two dimensional (2D) transition metal dichalcogenides [14,15], graphene [16,17] and carbide nanosheets [18,19], three dimensional (3D) metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) [20,21] and conductive polymers [22,23] have been used for the fabrication of flexible sensors Despite the fact these materials have been widely investigated, their intrinsic low mechanical properties, poor stability, non-biocompatibility, non-biodegradability and toxicity have limited their applications. The current challenges and trends of biopolymers-based sensors are described and discussed
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