Wearable Resistive-Type Sensors Based on Graphene Fibers for Monitoring Human Motions

The potential applications in wearable electronics promote the booming development of flexible and wearable sensors in recent years. Graphene fiber (G-F), as a new smart important one-dimensional material, has outstanding conductivity and flexibility. Because of these excellent properties, G-F is an ideal material for fabricating wearable and flexible sensors. In this work, a wearable resistive-type G-Fs sensor was successfully fabricated, analyzed, and used to monitor human motions. The prepared G-Fs sensor not only had a broad range of detecting bending angles from 0 to 120° but also exhibited high sensitivity, long cycle stability, and a fast response time of about 70 ms. More importantly, the deformation sensing mechanisms of the G-Fs sensor and pure G-Fs were proposed and analyzed. The wearable G-Fs sensor demonstrated high sensitivity, accuracy, and good reproducibility in detecting human motions, such as joint and muscle movements. The excellent performances and the proposed deformation sensing of G-Fs sensors would promote the application of G-Fs in flexible and wearable electronics.