Flexible thin-film sensors have been developed for practical uses in invasive or noninvasive cost-effective healthcare devices, which requires high sensitivity, stretchability, biocompatibility, skin/organ-conformity, and often transparency. Graphene nanoplatelets can be spontaneously assembled into transparent and conductive ultrathin coatings on micropatterned surfaces or planar substrates via a convective Marangoni force in a highly controlled manner. Based on this versatile graphene assembled film preparation, a thin, stretchable and skin-conformal sensor array (144 pixels) is fabricated having microtopography-guided, graphene-based, conductive patterns embedded without any complicated processes. The electrically controlled sensor array for mapping spatial distributions (144 pixels) shows high sensitivity (maximum gauge factor ≈1697), skin-like stretchability (<48%), high cyclic stability or durability (over 105 cycles), and the signal amplification (≈5.25 times) via structure-assisted intimate-contacts between the device and rough skin. Furthermore, given the thin-film programmable architecture and mechanical deformability of the sensor, a human skin-conformal sensor is demonstrated with a wireless transmitter for expeditious diagnosis of cardiovascular and cardiac illnesses, which is capable of monitoring various amplified pulse-waveforms and evolved into a mechanical/thermal-sensitive electric rubber-balloon and an electronic blood-vessel. The microtopography-guided and self-assembled conductive patterns offer highly promising methodology and tool for next-generation biomedical devices and various flexible/stretchable (wearable) devices.
Keywords: biosensors; conductive patterning; graphene nanoplatelets; self-assembly.
© 2017 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.