A wearable strain sensor based on carbon derived from linen fabrics

A stretchable, skin-mountable and wearable strain sensor is important because of its possible applications in monitoring our daily life and work, such as robotic intelligent equipment, health-monitoring, human motion detection and remote precise diagnosis. A linen fabric-derived carbon (LDC) has been rationally integrated with 2D graphene and 1D silver nanowires by impregnation of the linen fabric with a graphene oxide suspension followed by carbonization and final impregnation with a suspension of silver nanowires. The Ag nanowires/graphene/linen-derived carbon (Ag-GLDC) composite sensor exhibits excellent stretchability (>60%), good cycling stability, and high sensitivity with gauge factors of 11.2, 36.8 and 74.5for strains of 0–20%, 20%–40%, 40%–60%, respectively. The composite sensor has been successfully used to monitor the vigorousmotion of human body joints (wrist, knee and elbow), suggesting its potential use in human motion detection. This work provides a new method for the preparation of flexible and wearable composite strain sensors with high performance.