Ultrasensitive and Wearable Carbon Hybrid Fiber Devices as Robust Intelligent Sensors

• Published in: ACS applied materials & interfaces 2021-05, Vol.13 (20), p.23905-23914
• Main Authors: Hu, Yunfeng, Huang, Tieqi, Zhang, Hongjian, Lin, Huijuan, Zhang, Yao, Ke, Longwei, Cao, Wei, Hu, Kang, Ding, Ying, Wang, Xueyou, Rui, Kun, Zhu, Jixin, Huang, Wei
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Functional Inorganic Materials and Devices
• ISSN: 1944-8244; 1944-8252
• DOI: 10.1021/acsami.1c03615

The growing applications of wearable electronics, electronic textiles, and biomedical devices have sparked explosive demand for high-performance flexible sensors. Herein, we report a facile approach for fabricating a highly sensitive carbon hybrid fiber, which is composed of a graphene fiber skeleton and carbon nanotube (CNT) branches. In this hierarchical fiber, in situ grown CNTs prohibit the stacking of graphene sheets and bridge graphene layers simultaneously, making the hybrid fiber fluffy and conductive. Due to the well-designed architecture, the assembled fiber sensor exhibits satisfactory performance with a high gauge factor (up to 1127), a fast response time (less than 70 ms), and excellent reliability and stability (>2000 cycles). This work provides a feasible and scalable pathway for the fabrication of ultrasensitive fiber-based sensors, achieving the full realization of monitoring human physiological signals and architecting a real-time human–machine controlling system. Moreover, these practical sensors are used to monitor the sitting posture to prevent cervical spondylosis and lumbar disc herniation.