Revolution-assisted direct writing of highly controllable spiral graphene fibers with ultrasensitive photoelectric response

Abstract

Spiral graphene-based fibers have enticing advantages in high breakage elongation and stable electrical property during the tensile process, but the conventional manufacturing methods are complicated and hard to produce in large quantities. Herein, we demonstrated a facile and effective revolution-assisted direct writing strategy for controllably constructing spiral graphene fiber, with a spinneret revolving along a revolution axis in the coagulation bath. The resulting spiral graphene fiber displayed excellent mechanical and electrical stability even when stretched 20000 times at 320% elongation, as well as easily regulatable radius (0.1–3.5 mm) and pitch (1–8 mm) through changing the revolution radius (distance between spinneret and revolution axis) and the motion (horizontal movement and rotation speed) of the spinneret, respectively. Moreover, functionalized with TiO2 nanoparticles, the obtained spiral composite fiber featured a highly sensitive photoelectric response to its tiny deformation, implying a great potential for liquid micro-vibration detection. This study provides a new strategy to fabricate controllably spiral graphene-based fibers with high properties.