Silicone/Carbon Black-Filled Elastomer-Based Self-Healing Strain Sensor

The recent interest in flexible and stretchable strain sensors reflects their potential applications in various fields, including healthcare monitoring, soft robotics, and electronic skins. In addition to high stretchability and excellent sensing properties, self-healability is also a highly desirable property of stretchable strain sensors as it allows increasing their lifespan and, thus, reduce electronic waste and cost. In this letter, a self-healing silicone tape is introduced as a self healable flexible substrate that to fabricate a resistive strain sensor. The sensor has an average gauge factor of 34.6 +/- 0.26 up to 50% stretch. Moreover, the sensor can be cut and healed without the use of any adhesive materials or heating. After cutting, the healed sensor still has an average gauge factor of 2.0 +/- 0.006 up to 4% stretch, a stable response over 150 stretch-release cyclic tests, and breaks only after 18% of applied tensile strain.

Automated summary

The recent interest in flexible and stretchable strain sensors is due to their potential applications in various fields, such as healthcare monitoring, soft robotics, and electronic skins. Self-healability is also an important property of stretchable strain sensors, as it increases their lifespan and reduces electronic waste and cost.