Conducting Polymer Based Visual-Aided Smart Thermosensors on Arbitrary Substrates

Conducting polymers have shown appealing performances as sensing materials in various smart sensors such as gas, chemical and biological sensors, owing to their unique physical and electrical properties. This study reports a novel development for the fabrication of visual-aided smart thermal (VAST) sensors. The sensors are based on conducting polymers, temperature-sensitive resin, and liquid crystal molecules via direct scrawling and in situ solventless polymerization. In the VAST sensor, the thermochromism resins and liquid crystals form a visual-aided system with the real-time early warning function and the conducting polymers provide an ultrahigh resolution by the measure of the change of resistivity. Additionally, these VAST sensors also hold the advantages of low cost, using simple tools, high stability, excellent adaptability to arbitrary substrates, wide application fields, and facile large-scale fabrication. These properties are in favor of fabricating smart thermal sensors to satisfy the practical demands, such as the demonstrated temperature detecting system (especially flexible devices with nonplanar surface), thermodefect diagnostic system, smart battery monitoring system, and other environment monitoring.