Highly Stretchable Capacitive Sensor with Printed Carbon Black Electrodes on Barium Titanate Elastomer Composite

Eshwar Reddy Cholleti; Jonathan Stringer; Mahtab Assadian; Virginie Battmann; Chris Bowen; Kean Aw

doi:10.3390/s19010042

Highly Stretchable Capacitive Sensor with Printed Carbon Black Electrodes on Barium Titanate Elastomer Composite

Sensors (Basel). 2018 Dec 22;19(1):42. doi: 10.3390/s19010042.

Authors

Eshwar Reddy Cholleti¹, Jonathan Stringer², Mahtab Assadian³, Virginie Battmann⁴, Chris Bowen⁵, Kean Aw⁶

Affiliations

¹ Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Auckland, 1010 Auckland, New Zealand. echo896@aucklanduni.ac.nz.
² Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Auckland, 1010 Auckland, New Zealand. j.stringer@auckland.ac.nz.
³ Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Auckland, 1010 Auckland, New Zealand. m.assadian@auckland.ac.nz.
⁴ Department of Materials Engineering, Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Ingénieurs de Caen, 14000 Caen, France. virginie.battmann@ecole.ensicaen.fr.
⁵ Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Bath, BA2 7AY Bath, UK. c.r.bowen@bath.ac.uk.
⁶ Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Auckland, 1010 Auckland, New Zealand. k.aw@auckland.ac.nz.

Abstract

Wearable electronics and soft robotics are emerging fields utilizing soft and stretchable sensors for a variety of wearable applications. In this paper, the fabrication of a highly stretchable capacitive sensor with a printed carbon black/Ecoflex interdigital capacitor is presented. The highly stretchable capacitive sensor was fabricated on a substrate made from barium titanate⁻Ecoflex^TM 00-30 composite, and could withstand stretching up to 100%. The designed highly stretchable capacitive sensor was robust, and showed good repeatability and consistency when stretched and relaxed for over 1000 cycles.

Keywords: barium titanate; highly stretchable sensor; printed carbon black interdigital capacitor.