A Single-material-printed, Low-cost design for a Carbon-based fabric strain sensor

The manufacturing of flexible strain sensors for wearable electronics usually requires different conductive materials for the sensing part and the connection part. This increases the complexity, cost, and performance issues due to the mismatch of the thermo-electro-mechanical properties of the materials. Herein, a new design scheme using a single conductive material is presented for a low-cost mass-producible fabric strain sensor, where a carbon/silicone nanocomposite is screen-printed to make both parts. By exploring the dimension effect and modelling of the conductive tracks, and adopting a large difference of over 100 times in aspect ratio, this research makes the electrical response of the fabric strain sensor depend almost exclusively on the sensing part, while its connection part has a low resistance. The sensor exhibits outstanding performance with a wide working range (60% strain), adequate linearity, long fatigue life (similar to 50,000 cycles), and mechanical robustness, rendering it suitable for human body movement detection. Moreover, the manufacturing process is simple and low-cost ($11 per m(2)). Thus, the new design scheme overcomes the mismatch issue and provides an important reference value for the design of flexible resistive sensors working in a high resistance range, from similar to 100 K Omega to several M Omega. (C) 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Automated summary

A new design scheme using a single conductive material for flexible strain sensors is presented. The sensor exhibits outstanding performance and mechanical robustness, making it suitable for human body movement detection. The manufacturing process is simple and low-cost.