Printable low-cost and flexible carbon nanotube buckypaper strain sensors
Résumé
There is a need for cheap, flexible, and highly sensitive strain sensors that can detect micro strains prevalent in structural health monitoring, wearable technology, and micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS). We also need scalable and low-cost methods to sense deformations in wind turbine blades, artillery, composite structures, other large structures. Wearable technology will reshape the way we approach rehabilitation, physical training, and many high-dexterity tasks by harvesting data about body motions. We have developed low-profile and low-cost strain sensors from multi-walled carbon nanotube buckypaper (MWCNT-BP), which is a network of carbon nanotubes. Carbon nanotubes are mostly known for their unmatched strength and excellent conductivity; however, their ability to provide sensory information is also attractive. The CNT buckypaper sensors in this report are manufactured using simple desktop-inkjet-printing technology. The resultant sensors are 77% more sensitive than similar designs and nearly 700% more sensitive than commercial products. We display the sensors performance by integrating the sensors into a fabric glove for finger motion detection and gluing the sensors onto a carbon fiber composite structure for stress detection. © Copyright 2017. Used by the Society of the Advancement of Material and Process Engineering with permission.
Mots clés
Carbon fibers
Costs
MEMS
Multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCN)
Strain
Structural health monitoring
Structure (composition)
Turbomachine blades
Wind turbines
Yarn
Carbon nanotube buckypaper
Commercial products
Desktop ink-jet printing
Micro electromechanical system (MEMS)
Physical training
Sensory information
Stress detection
Wind turbine blades
Wearable sensors