There is a growing demand for flexible and soft electronic devices. In particular, stretchable, skin-mountable, and wearable strain sensors are needed for several potential applications including personalized health-monitoring, human motion detection, human-machine interfaces, soft robotics, and so forth. This Feature Article presents recent advancements in the development of flexible and stretchable strain sensors. The article shows that highly stretchable strain sensors are successfully being developed by new mechanisms such as disconnection between overlapped nanomaterials, crack propagation in thin films, and tunneling effect, different from traditional strain sensing mechanisms. Strain sensing performances of recently reported strain sensors are comprehensively studied and discussed, showing that appropriate choice of composite structures as well as suitable interaction between functional nanomaterials and polymers are essential for the high performance strain sensing. Next, simulation results of piezoresistivity of stretchable strain sensors by computational models are reported. Finally, potential applications of flexible strain sensors are described. This survey reveals that flexible, skin-mountable, and wearable strain sensors have potential in diverse applications while several grand challenges have to be still overcome.

Stretchable, Skin-Mountable, and Wearable Strain Sensors and Their Potential Applications: A Review

The demand for flexible and wearable electronic devices is increasing due to their facile interaction with human body. Flexible, stretchable and wearable sensors can be easily mounted on clothing or directly attached onto the body. Especially, highly stretchable and sensitive strain sensors are needed for the human motion detection. Here, we report highly flexible, stretchable and sensitive strain sensors based on the nanocomposite of silver nanowire (AgNW) network and PDMS elastomer in the form of the sandwich structure (i.e., AgNW thin film embedded between two layers of PDMS). The AgNW network-elastomer nanocomposite based strain sensors show strong piezoresistivity with tunable gauge factors in the ranges of 2 to 14 and a high stretchability up to 70%. We demonstrate the applicability of our high performance strain sensors by fabricating a glove integrated with five strain sensors for the motion detection of fingers and control of an avatar in the virtual environment.

Highly Stretchable and Sensitive Strain Sensor Based on Silver Nanowire–Elastomer Nanocomposite

Flexible and stretchable physical sensors that can measure and quantify electrical signals generated by human activities are attracting a great deal of attention as they have unique characteristics, such as ultrathinness, low modulus, light weight, high flexibility, and stretchability. These flexible and stretchable physical sensors conformally attached on the surface of organs or skin can provide a new opportunity for human-activity monitoring and personal healthcare. Consequently, in recent years there has been considerable research effort devoted to the development of flexible and stretchable physical sensors to fulfill the requirements of future technology, and much progress has been achieved. Here, the most recent developments of flexible and stretchable physical sensors are described, including temperature, pressure, and strain sensors, and flexible and stretchable sensor-integrated platforms. The latest successful examples of flexible and stretchable physical sensors for the detection of temperature, pressure, and strain, as well as their novel structures, technological innovations, and challenges, are reviewed first. In the next section, recent progress regarding sensor-integrated wearable platforms is overviewed in detail. Some of the latest achievements regarding self-powered sensor-integrated wearable platform technologies are also reviewed. Further research direction and challenges are also proposed to develop a fully sensor-integrated wearable platform for monitoring human activity and personal healthcare in the near future.

Flexible and Stretchable Physical Sensor Integrated Platforms for Wearable Human-Activity Monitoringand Personal Healthcare.

Nanotechnology in concrete – A review

Flexible electronics offer a wide-variety of applications such as flexible circuits, flexible displays, flexible solar cells, skin-like pressure sensors, and conformable RFID tags. Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are a promising material for flexible electronics, both as the channel material in field-effect transistors (FETs) and as transparent electrodes, due to their high intrinsic carrier mobility, conductivity, and mechanical flexibility. In this feature article, we review the recent progress of CNTs in flexible electronics by describing both the processing and the applications of CNT-based flexible devices. To employ CNTs as the channel material in FETs, single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) are used. There are generally two methods of depositing SWNTs on flexible substrates—transferring CVD-grown SWNTs or solution-depositing SWNTs. Since CVD-grown SWNTs can be highly aligned, they often outperform solution-processed SWNT films that are typically in the form of random network. However, solution-based SWNTs can be printed at a large-scale and at low-cost, rendering them more appropriate for manufacturing. In either case, the removal of metallic SWNTs in an effective and a scalable manner is critical, which must still be developed and optimized. Nevertheless, promising results demonstrating SWNT-based flexible circuits, displays, RF-devices, and biochemical sensors have been reported by various research groups, proving insight into the exciting possibilities of SWNT-based FETs. In using carbon nanotubes as transparent electrodes (TEs), two main strategies have been implemented to fabricate highly conductive, transparent, and mechanically compliant films—superaligned films of CNTs drawn from vertically grown CNT forests using the “dry-drawing” technique and the deposition or embedding of CNTs onto flexible or stretchable substrates. The main challenge for CNT based TEs is to fabricate films that are both highly conductive and transparent. These CNT based TEs have been used in stretchable and flexible pressure, strain, and chemical and biological sensors. In addition, they have also been used as the anode and cathode in flexible light emitting diodes, solar cells, and supercapacitors. In summary, there are a number of challenges yet to overcome to optimize the processing and performance of CNT-based flexible electronics; nonetheless, CNTs remain a highly suitable candidate for various flexible electronic applications in the near future.

A review of fabrication and applications of carbon nanotube film-based flexible electronics

For an engineering feasibility study, we studied a simple design to improve NCSS (nanocarbon composite strain sensor) sensitivity by using its geometric pattern at a macro scale. We fabricated bulk- and grid-type sensors with different filler content weights (wt.%) and different sensor lengths and investigated their sensitivity characteristics. We also proposed a unit gauge factor model of NCSS to find a correlation between sensor length and its sensitivity. NCSS sensitivity was improved proportional to its length incremental ratio and we were able to achieve better linear and consistent data from the grid type than the bulk type one. We conclude that the longer sensor length results in a larger change of resistance due to its piezoresistive unit summation and that sensor geometric pattern design is one of the important issues for axial load and deformation measurement.

Piezoresistive Characteristics of Nanocarbon Composite Strain Sensor by Its Longitudinal Pattern Design

In this study we introduce a preliminary on going work to develop a novel spoke type joint torque sensor of robots by using multi-walled carbon nanotube (MWCNT) strain sensors. We use a nanocomposite solution casting process to fabricate a liquid type strain sensor which can be easily installed on complicate surfaces. To install the strain sensors on the spoke of the joint sensor, we painted the strain sensor with a brush and get solid sensors after curing process. The voltage output responses of the sensors showed somehow linear responses to torque inputs. We are expecting that the nano-carbon based strain sensor might be able to replace the conventional strain gauges which are popular to build torque sensors.

Development of a spoke type novel joint torque sensor by using nano carbon strain sensors

http://www.koreascience.or.kr:80/article/JAKO201713059661195.pdf

A Study on the Development of a Novel Pressure Sensor based on Nano Carbon Piezoresistive Composite by Using 3D Printing

This paper introduces an ongoing study to development a novel flexible tactile sensing system. The tactile system is consisted of the array of flexible sensors having piezoresistivity. To achieve flexibility and high sensitivity, the flexible sensors have been developed with smart nanocomposites. The smart nanocomposites are fabricated with multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) and graphene oxide (GO). The piezo-resistive characteristics of the sensors show fairy linear strain sensing with gauge factor range from 1~300 with respect to various strain range (~ 0.4%). The GO based strain sensor shows impact response over 0.09kg m/s which can sufficiently detect small contact forces. The long and flexible sensor can be considered to be a continuous sensor like a dendrite of a neuron in the human body and we named the sensor as a biomimetic artificial neuron. To mimic tactile system, we design ANMS (Artificial Neuron Matrix System) consisting the array of neurons and develop tactile algorithm to localize the contact information with a signal processing system.

Carbon nano artificial neuron system for flexible tactile sensing

A method for impact and damage detection on a plate using strain responses from long continuous sensors and analysis by a neural network technique was presented and verified by numerical simulation. The response characteristics of continuous sensors, which are long ribbon-like sensors, were studied by simulation of wave propagation in a panel. The advantage of the continuous sensor is to improve damage detection by having a large coverage of sensors on the structure using a small number of channels of data acquisition. Strain responses from the continuous sensors were used to estimate the damage location using the neural network technique. Several numerical wave propagation simulation runs for a plate were carried out to train the neural network and verify the proposed method for damage localization. The identified damage locations agreed reasonably well with the exact damage locations. Overall, the approach presented is meant to simplify the instrumentation needed for damage detection by using continuous sensors, a small number of channels of data acquisition, and training a neural network to do the work of locating the damage source.

Inpil Kang

Papers

Piezoresistive Characteristics of Nanocarbon Composite Strain Sensor by Its Longitudinal Pattern Design

Development of a spoke type novel joint torque sensor by using nano carbon strain sensors

A Study on the Development of a Novel Pressure Sensor based on Nano Carbon Piezoresistive Composite by Using 3D Printing

Carbon nano artificial neuron system for flexible tactile sensing

Health monitoring method for plate structures using continuous sensors and neural network analysis