Please login first
New-piezoresistive structures able to be integrated in flexible sensors: Electrospun nanofibers collected onto wire substrates
* , *
1  Politecnico di Torino, Department of Applied Science and Technology
2  Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Center For Sustainable Future Technologies
Academic Editor: Ullrich Scherf

Abstract:

Flexible and stretchable strain-pressure sensors received great interest due to growing demand in several applications of wide variety of fields, like industrial, automotive, robotics, sports and biomedical. They attracted significant interest to design body-integrated electronic-systems, allowing real-time detection and analysis of human-body movements. Sensors’ performance was strictly correlated with materials’ selection, that must satisfy requirements: high stretchability, excellent biocompatibility, great conformability, and low cost. To satisfy all features, we propose electrospun-nanofibers as sensitive elements, since they, thanks to their intrinsic properties, offered important strategies to design flexible sensors with superior electrical and mechanical performances. We proposed composite-PEO-MWCNTs nanofibers as sensitive materials. To realize new-piezoresistive structures able to be integrated in flexible sensors, optimizing their performance, we investigated two different rotating-collectors. The first collector is a non-conductive-wire and the second one is a non-conductive-hollow-wire of heat-shrinkable material. We demonstrated how these different collectors induced ordered nanofibers distribution respect to nanofibers’ randomly distribution into planar configurations, while their percolation behaviour was no affected by different distributions. For what concerned piezoresistive-performance, we demonstrated good electrical behaviour of nanofibers before and after applied-deformations, confirming their complete reliability and reuse as sensitive nanomaterials. Piezoresistive-responses confirmed an increase of nanofibers’ resistance with the increasing of applied pressure. A dimensionless parameter|∆R/R0|was calculated and plotted as a function of applied pressure to define sensitivity and resolution of sensors. All results highlighted good sensors’ resolution and sensitivity achieved when ordered nanofibers were collected onto both wire substrate, thus being able to extend the deformation range to which the sensitive nanomaterial can be subjected. New flexible-pressure sensor is proposed as device direct integrable into textile.

Keywords: Composite nanofibers; Electrospinning; Piezoresistivity; pressure sensors; Flexible sensores; wire-shaped nanofibers
Top