Abstract
Sensors based on carbon nanomaterials are gaining importance due to their tunable properties and their potentially outstanding sensing performance. Despite their advantages, carbon-based nanomaterial sensors are prone to cross-sensitivities with environmental factors like temperature. Thus, to reduce the temperature influence on the sensing material, compensation and correction procedures are usually considered. These methods may require the use of additional sensors which can themselves be subject to residual errors. Hence, a more promising approach consists of synthesizing a material that is capable of self-compensating for the influence of temperature. In this study, a hybrid nanocomposite based on multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT) and graphene is proposed, which can compensate, by itself, for the influence of temperature on the material conductivity. The hybrid nanocomposite material uses the different temperature behavior of MWCNTs, which have a negative temperature coefficient, and graphene, which has a positive temperature coefficient. The influence of the material ratio and dispersion quality are investigated in this work. Material composition and dispersion quality are analyzed using Raman spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). A composition of 70% graphene and 30% MWCNT exhibits a nearly temperature-independent hybrid nanocomposite with a sensitivity of 0.022 Ω/°C, corresponding to a resistance change of ~1.2 Ω for a temperature range of 25 to 80 °C. Additionally, a simple investigation of the strain sensing behavior of the hybrid material is also presented. The hybrid nanocomposite-based, thin-film strain sensor exhibits good stability over 100 cycles and a significantly high gauge factor, i.e., 16.21.
Highlights
Nanomaterials such as graphene and carbon nanotubes (CNT) have been shown to have potential applications in the field of material-based sensor development, due to their piezoresistive properties
Designing a nanocomposite material that is capable of self-compensation of temperature influence requires a combination of a positive temperature coefficient material like graphene and a negative temperature coefficient material like multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT)
The resulting hybrid material can be designed to be insensitive to temperature variation while retaining its strain sensing properties
Summary
Nanomaterials such as graphene and carbon nanotubes (CNT) have been shown to have potential applications in the field of material-based sensor development, due to their piezoresistive properties. Several studies have been carried out to develop strain sensors based on graphene [1,2,3] and CNT [4,5,6,7,8]. The piezoresistive behavior of these materials is influenced by environmental factors like temperature and humidity. It is important for a sensor to show temperature-independent behavior in order to have high sensitivity and accuracy for measurements of strain in a wide range of temperatures. The influence of temperature on these sensors needs to be taken into consideration in order to make them reliable, accurate, and precise
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