posted on 2015-12-02, 00:00authored byMohammad Ali Darabi, Ali Khosrozadeh, Quan Wang, Malcolm Xing
Presented
in this work is a novel and facile approach to fabricate an elastic,
attachable, and cost-efficient carbon nanotube (CNT)-based strain
gauge which can be efficiently used as bodily motion sensors. An innovative
and unique method is introduced to align CNTs without external excitations
or any complicated procedure. In this design, CNTs are aligned and
distributed uniformly on the entire chewing gum by multiple stretching
and folding technique. The current sensor is demonstrated to be a
linear strain sensor for at least strains up to 200% and can detect
strains as high as 530% with a high sensitivity ranging from 12 to
25 and high durability. The gum sensor has been used as bodily motion
sensors, and outstanding results are achieved; the sensitivity is
quite high, capable of tracing slow breathing. Since the gum sensor
can be patterned into various forms, it has wide applications in miniaturized
sensors and biochips. Interestingly, we revealed that our gum sensor
has the ability to monitor humidity changes with high sensitivity
and fast resistance response capable of monitoring human breathing.