Thermally-induced self-cutting surfaced reduced graphene oxide fibers for smart fire alarm

Abstract

Fire is the most frequent catastrophic incident and the design and development of fire sensors with self-cutting and ultra-sensitive fire alarm response are extremely urgent. Here, conductive reduced graphene oxide fibers (RGOF) with a layered structure were prepared by roll-folding and twisting the chemically reduced graphene oxide (RGO) films. The roll-folding and twisting can promote the expansion of the RGOF when exposed to high temperature or flame attack, which makes the RGOF easy to fracture. Based on this unique self-cutting property of RGOF, a new fire detection and alarm device has been developed. The ultra-fast alarm response (∼1 s) of the RGOF is triggered once encountering a flame. The RGOF also has a high-temperature alarm function with a minimum alarm temperature of 150 °C. Interestingly, this RGOF can also act like a fuse and cut off conductive circuits in time when it encounters abnormally high circuit voltages. This discovery expands the range of applications for RGO and provides new ideas for the design of advanced fire alarm sensors.