Liquid Metal Fiber Composed of Tubular Channel for 

High-Performance Strain Sensor

Yun-hui Wu , Rong-min Zheng , Hai-zhou Liu , shu-qi Liu , Zhi-fu Deng , Pingping Wang , Song Chen and Lan Liu*

Abstract

Stretchable sensors with high sensitivity, hysteresis-free, high conductivity and fiber shape have great potential applications on stretchable electronics, soft robotics and smart clothes etc., especially in implantable biomedical fiber shape sensors. Herein, inspired by the capability of vessel organ on sensing temperature variation, a novel superelastic biocompatible fiber composed of tubular channel injected with low toxic liquid metal (LM) is reported to fabricate high-performance fiber sensor. This study not only reports a significantly promising strategy to achieve Young’s moduli matching between inorganic conductor and soft elastomer, but also provides a novel and facile approach learned from vessel channel structure of higher animals for strain sensor. The sensing mechanism model is verified, and the sensitivity can be regulated by controlling size of tubular channel as well as the hysteresis-free is also reported. The as-prepared LM fiber sensor exhibits nearly no hysteresis (0.11%), low detection limit (0.3% strain) and super-low resistance (0.344 Ω) as well as good repeat over 3500 cycles. The LM fiber sensor presents huge potential for emerging applications on stretchable electronics, human motion monitors, smart clothes etc., especially in implantable biomedical fiber shape sensor.

You can get the article from:http://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlepdf/2017/TC/C7TC04311B