Borayek Ramadan, Foroughi Firoozeh, Xin Xu, Mohamed Ayman Mahmoud, Abdelrahman Mahmoud M, Zedan Mostafa, Zhang Danwei, Ding Jun
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, National University of Singapore, 9 Engineering Drive 1, Singapore 117575, Singapore.
School of Materials Science and Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, 50 Nanyang Ave, Singapore 639798, Singapore.
ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2022 Mar 9;14(9):11727-11738. doi: 10.1021/acsami.1c24784. Epub 2022 Feb 28.
Soft conductive elastomers with low hysteresis over a wide range of stretchability are desirable in various applications. Such applications include soft sensors with a long measurement range, motion recognition, and electronic skin, just to name a few. Even though the measurement capability of the sensors based on soft materials has been greatly improved compared to the traditional ones in recent years, hysteresis in the loading and unloading states has limited the applications of these sensors, thereby negatively affecting their accuracy and reliability. In this work, conductive elastomers with near-zero hysteresis have been formulated and fabricated using 3D printing. These elastomers are made by combining highly stretchable dielectric elastomer formulations with a polar hydrophobic ionic liquid and polymerizing under ultraviolet light. High-performance piezoresistive sensors have been fabricated and characterized, with a 10-fold stretchability and low hysteresis (1.2%) over long-term stability (more than 10 000 cycles under cyclic stress) with a 20 ms response time. Additionally, the current elastomers displayed fast mechanical and electrical self-healing properties. Using 3D printing in conjunction with some of our structural innovations, we have fabricated smart gloves to show this material's wide range of applications in soft robots, motion detection, wearable devices, and medical care.
在各种应用中，都需要在很宽的拉伸性范围内具有低滞后性的柔软导电弹性体。此类应用包括具有长测量范围的软传感器、运动识别和电子皮肤等等。尽管近年来基于软材料的传感器的测量能力与传统传感器相比有了很大提高，但加载和卸载状态下的滞后现象限制了这些传感器的应用，从而对其准确性和可靠性产生负面影响。在这项工作中，通过3D打印制备并制造出了具有近零滞后性的导电弹性体。这些弹性体是通过将高拉伸性介电弹性体配方与极性疏水性离子液体相结合，并在紫外线下聚合而成。已经制造并表征了高性能压阻传感器，其具有10倍的拉伸性，在长期稳定性（循环应力下超过10000次循环）下具有低滞后性（1.2%），响应时间为20毫秒。此外，当前的弹性体还表现出快速的机械和电气自修复性能。通过将3D打印与我们的一些结构创新相结合，我们制造出了智能手套，以展示这种材料在软机器人、运动检测、可穿戴设备和医疗护理等方面的广泛应用。
