Porous polyvinyl alcohol/graphene oxide composite film for strain sensing and energy-storage applications

Xu Cui; Jia Guo; Sherif Araby; Fethi Abbassi; Chunyan Zhang; Abdullatif Lacina Diaby; Qingshi Meng

doi:10.1088/1361-6528/ac7b35

Porous polyvinyl alcohol/graphene oxide composite film for strain sensing and energy-storage applications

Nanotechnology. 2022 Jul 19;33(41). doi: 10.1088/1361-6528/ac7b35.

Authors

Xu Cui¹, Jia Guo¹, Sherif Araby^{2

3}, Fethi Abbassi⁴, Chunyan Zhang¹, Abdullatif Lacina Diaby⁵, Qingshi Meng^{1

6}

Affiliations

¹ College of Civil Aviation, Shenyang Aerospace University, Shenyang 110136, People's Republic of China.
² Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Nazarbayev University, Nur-Sultan, 010000, Kazakhstan.
³ Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Benha University, Benha, Egypt.
⁴ College of Engineering and Technology, American University of the Middle East, Kuwait.
⁵ UniSA Online (STEM), University of South Australia, SA 5000, Australia.
⁶ College of Aerospace Engineering, Shenyang Aerospace University, Shenyang 110136, People's Republic of China.

PMID: 35732160
DOI: 10.1088/1361-6528/ac7b35

Abstract

In this study, a flexible porous polyvinyl alcohol (PVA)/graphene oxide (GO) composite film was developed and tested for flexible strain sensing and energy-storage applications. Morphology and mechanical properties were studied; tensile strength and Young's modulus increased by 225% and 86.88%, respectively, at 0.5 wt% GO. The PVA/GO film possesses exceptional sensing ability to various mechanical strains, such as tension, compression, bending, and torsion. For example, the gauge factor of the PVA/GO film as a tensile-strain sensor was measured as 2.46 (246%). Under compression loads, the PVA/GO composite film showed piezoresistive and capacitive strain-sensing characteristics. Under 5 kPa of compression load, the relative resistance increased by 81% with a 100 msec response time; the relative capacitance increased by 160% with a 120 msec response time. The PVA/GO strain sensor exhibited high durability and reliability over 20 × 10³cycles of tensile strain and bending at 3.33 Hz. Moreover, the PVA/GO composite film showed good electrochemical properties due to its porous structure; the maximum capacitance was 124.7 F g^-1at 0.5 wt% GO. After 20 × 10³charging-discharging cycles, the capacitance retention rate was 94.45%, representing high stable capacitance performance. The results show that electrically conductive porous PVA nanocomposite films are promising candidates for strain sensing and energy-storage devices.

Keywords: graphene oxide; polyvinyl alcohol; porous structure; specific capacitance; strain sensor.