Regenerating leather waste for flexible pressure sensing applications

Jie Lei,Jiansheng Wu,Weina Zhang,Fengwei Huo,Runan Zhang,Kang Zhang,Bing Zheng,Ruijie Xie,Binghua Zou,Sheng Li

doi:10.1186/s42825-019-0009-5

Jie Lei, Jiansheng Wu + Show 8 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1186/s42825-019-0009-5

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Abstract

Pressure sensor can be applied in a wide range of fields, such as voice recognition, human motions detection and artificial electronic skin, the sensing of which is greatly influenced by the flexibility and stretchability of substrate materials. Here, based on the piezoresistive effect, new kinds of flexible pressure sensors have been realized from a pair of flexible and biocompatible collagen films: one is coated by silver nanowires (Ag NWs) and the other by interdigital electrode, respectively. The collagen films are regenerated from leather waste and could bring economic benefits to society. The prepared pressure sensors are applied for voice recognition and human motion detection.Graphical abstractA flexible pressure sensor based on two layers of regenerated collagen films coated silver nanowires (Ag NWs) and interdigital electrodes respectively are obtained. The flexible collagen films are prepared by dissolving leather waste into ionic liquid, [BMIM]Cl. The fabricated pressure sensor displays potential applications in voice recognition and human physical motion detection, such as finger and wrist bending-releasing, which are expected to access the training data of athletes, monitor some physical activities of patients synchronously and act as a voice recognition device.

Highlights

Driven by the development of intelligent manufacturing, intelligent robotics, human-machine interaction and biomedical diagnosis have received extensive attention [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8], and they have high requirments for flexible bending performances
The current increased when the volunteer performed bending motions of the wrist, and it decreased rapidly responding to the releasing motions due to the recovery of the sensor. These results demonstrate the capabilities of the sensor in detecting human motions, which might be beneficial to access the training data of athletes and monitor some physical activities of patients synchronously
3 Conclusions In conclusion, we have demonstrated the use of regenerated collagen films from leather waste as the substrate for flexible pressure sensors

Summary

Introduction

Driven by the development of intelligent manufacturing, intelligent robotics, human-machine interaction and biomedical diagnosis have received extensive attention [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8], and they have high requirments for flexible bending performances. We present the use of regenerated collagen films from leather waste as the substrate to fabricate a flexible and transparent pressure sensor, which is piezoresistive-type. It consists of two collagen films coating with Ag NWs as active layers and painted with Ag paste as the interdigital electrodes, respectively (Scheme 1). The sensor is capable of converting mechanical pressure into electrical signal effectively, and the pressure could be driven by different motion ranges of human body, such as voice recognition, finger and wrist bending-releasing motions These properties and characteritics rely heavily on the flexible collagen film. Due to the collagen film is biocompatible and comfortable to human skin, there are only small mechanical property mismatches between the prepared device and human body, making it quite promising to the applications for electronic skins

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