Polypyrrole (PPy) attached on porous conductive sponge derived from carbonized graphene oxide coated polyurethane (PU) and its application in pressure sensor

A porous conductive sponge derived from carbonized graphene oxide (GO) coated polyurethane (PU) is made and polypyrrole (PPy) attached on the walls then. The as-obtained PPy/[email protected] PU nanocomposite reserves the three-dimensional porous morphology of original PU sponge with PPy that the forms are nanospheres attached on the skeleton walls. After graphene oxide reduced to graphene, the conductivity and mechanical strength of carbonized PU increased. The as-made PPy/[email protected] PU nanocomposite with good mechanical property was used as pressure sensor. Due to introduce PPy in the [email protected] PU that could provide more contact sites which facilitating electron transfer and suffer more spatial deformation, the gauge factor (GF) of PPy/[email protected] PU is 0.171 in compression strain range below 33.8% and 0.770 at larger compression strain region. Furthermore, the value of the other sensitivity of PPy/[email protected] PU based pressure sensor S is 0.635 kPa−1. With the excellent performances, PPy/[email protected] PU shows potential applications in pressure sensors under the deformations of compression.