Journal
ACS SENSORS
Volume 1, Issue 3, Pages 303-311Publisher
AMER CHEMICAL SOC
DOI: 10.1021/acssensors.5b00195
Keywords
stretchable conductor; ionic liquids; strain sensor; wetting; health monitoring
Funding
- Australian Research Council [DE140100541, DP140100052, DP150103750]
- Australian Research Council [DE140100541] Funding Source: Australian Research Council
Ask authors/readers for more resources
The inherent limitation of stretchable conductor design is mechanical mismatch, because typical Young's moduli of inorganic conductors are 5-6 orders of magnitude larger than that of the soft elastomers-leading to material delamination and/or local fracturing under large strains. To address this challenge, we report a simple yet general liquid wetting solid strategy to fabricate stretchable conductors, which can overcome the aforementioned challenges. Our approach-utilizing ionic liquids (ILs) as the conductive components-is conceptually different from traditional metals/polymers (briefly rigid-on-soft type) construction, since we employ a lower Young's modulus conductive liquid to integrate with elastomers (briefly soft-on-soft type). It is also different from previously reported liquid metal strategy, in which high surface tension limits the scope of applications. Our IL-based strategy is universal and applicable to different hydrophilic/hydrophobic IL species, and able to turn diverse soft elastomeric supports into stretchable conductors in a simple and rapid manner. The IL-based conductors exhibit exceptional performance-functioning at ultralarge strains (epsilon > 600%); high sensitivity down to a low-strain of 0.05%; high durability with negligible loading-unloading signal changes over 10 000 cycles. In addition, skin-attachable and cloth-integratable features allow a wide range of human-motion detections. We envision that this liquid-wetting-solid strategy will be promising on the large-scale fabrication of stretchable electronics, personal health monitoring, and smart electrical skins for soft robots and prosthetics.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available