Integrated Sensing and Warning Multifunctional Devices Based on the Combined Mechanical and Thermal Effect of Porous Graphene

ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2020 Nov 25;12(47):53049-53057. doi: 10.1021/acsami.0c13909. Epub 2020 Nov 10.

Abstract

Wearable devices with integrated alarm functions play a vital role in daily life and can help people prevent potential hazards. Although many wearable sensors have been extensively studied and proposed to monitor various physiological signals, most of them are needed to integrate with the external alarm elements to realize warning, such as light-emitting diodes and buzzers, resulting in the system complexity and poor flexibility. In this paper, an integrated sensing and warning multifunctional device based on the mechanical and thermal effect of porous graphene is proposed on a bilayer asymmetrical pattern of laser-induced graphene (LIG). Compared with the strain sensor with nonpatterned LIG, the mechanical performance is greatly improved with the highest gauge factor value of up to 950 for the strain sensor with mesh-patterned LIG. On the contrary, the heating performance of the heater with nonpatterned LIG is better than that with mesh-patterned LIG. Combining the performance differences of different LIG patterns, the integrated wearable device with a bilayer asymmetrical LIG pattern is demonstrated. It can generate enough heating energy to warn the person when the detected signal meets the threshold condition measured in real time by the ultrasensitive strain sensor. This work will provide a new way to construct an integrated wearable device for realizing multifunctional applications. This integrated multifunctional device shows great potential toward the applications in healthcare monitoring and timely warning.

Keywords: health monitoring; laser-induced graphene; patterned structure; tensile strain sensor; thermal alarm; wearable electronics.

MeSH terms

  • Body Temperature
  • Graphite / chemistry*
  • Humans
  • Lasers
  • Monitoring, Physiologic / instrumentation
  • Monitoring, Physiologic / methods
  • Porosity
  • Wearable Electronic Devices*

Substances

  • Graphite