Novel Electrically-Conductive Porous PDMS/Carbon Nanofibre Composites for Deformable Strain-Sensors and Conductors

1 ACS: Applied Materials and Interfaces. 2017 to be published. Novel Electrically-Conductive Porous PDMS/Carbon Nanofibre Composites for Deformable Strain-Sensors and Conductors Shuying Wu, †, ‡ Jin Zhang, § Raj B. Ladani, † Anil R. Ravindran, † Adrian P. Mouritz, † Anthony J. Kinloch, ∥ and Chun H. Wang ‡, * † Sir Lawrence Wackett Aerospace Research Centre, School of Engineering, RMIT University, GPO Box 2476, Melbourne, VIC 3001, Australia ‡ School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia § Australian Future Fibres Research and Innovation Centre, Institute for Frontier Materials, Deakin University, VIC 3220, Australia ∥ Department of Mechanical Engineering, Imperial College London, London, SW7 2BX, UK *E-mail: [email protected] KEYWORDS: Porous nanocomposites, stretchable, strain-sensor, conductor, piezoresistivity, carbon nanofibres, polydimethylsiloxane ABSTRACT Highly flexible and deformable electrically-conductive materials are vital for the emerging field of wearable electronics. To address the challenge of flexible materials with a relatively high electrical conductivity and a high elastic limit, we report a new and facile method to prepare porous polydimethylsiloxane/carbon nanofibre composites (denoted by p-PDMS/CNF). This method involves using sugar particles coated with carbon nanofibres (CNFs) as the templates. The resulting three-dimensional porous nanocomposites, with the CNFs embedded in the PDMS pore walls, exhibit a greatly increased failure strain (up to ~ 94%) compared to that of the solid,

Novel Electrically-Conductive Porous PDMS/Carbon Nanofibre Composites for Deformable Strain-Sensors and Conductors

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porous nanocomposites

stretchable

strainsensor

conductor

piezoresistivity

carbon nanofibres

polydimethylsiloxane