Carbonized Chinese Art Paper-Based High-Performance Wearable Strain Sensor for Human Activity Monitoring

Abstract

Because of the rapid evolution of wearable devices, great effort has been devoted to widely developing flexible strain sensors, as one of the most important components. However, realizing the low-cost, large-scale manufacturing of flexible strain sensor with a wide response range and excellent sensitivity remains difficult to date. Chinese art paper (CAP), a significant Chinese cultural heritage, is a processed product of biological materials prepared from plant fibers that can be considered as a nonwoven type of film. Herein, we show the manufacturing of the outstanding strain sensors based on carbonized commercial CAP (CCAP), which possess fascinating properties, including large response range (0–120%), excellent sensitivity (gauge factor (GF) of 68 under the strain of 100% and 248 in the strain of (100–120%)), high durability, high stability, and low detection limits (0.01% strain). Furthermore, we demonstrate their abilities in monitoring both vigorous and tiny human motions, showing promising applications in wearable devices and artificial intelligence robots.