Development of piezoresistive sensor using electronic ionic polymer conductive nanocomposite

Abstract

Conducting polymer nanocomposites (CPNCs) are the new class of smart materials developed by incorporating conducting nanofillers inside the polymer matrix. The CPNCs are capable of mimicking the human motions by experiencing the change obtained by stimuli in the form of force, pressure, light and humidity for various sensing applications. CPNCs are widely recommended for various sensor applications such as strain sensors, gas sensors, humidity sensors, electronic skin, etc. Moreover, CPNCs has been receiving tremendous attraction due to attractive physical and chemical properties which can be tailored according to the needs of the application. Further, these smart materials show various unique properties such as lightweight, flexible nature, high electrical conductivity, mechanical strength, chemical resistant, thermal stability, ease of fabrication, etc. With this, the flexible CPNCs show great commercial success in applications of soft muscles, flexible actuators as manipulators, strain sensors for structural health monitoring, pressure sensors for human health monitoring, biomedical devices and various other electronic devices due to their lightweight and ease of feasibility. newlineTraditionally, the metals were considered best for sensing applications due to their high conducting behaviour and variable range of measuring, but the rigidity factor and heavyweight restricted their applications for the complicated shapes and opened a new window for the research of soft polymer sensors. But polymers being themselves insulating in nature could not fulfill the need and this led to the origin of conducting polymers and CPNC. But the addition of conducting nanofillers degraded the flexibility and increased conductivity therefore in the present work we propose the development and analysis of CPNC material showing highly flexible mechanical behaviour with high electrical conductivity simultaneously necessary for sensing applications. The focus of the study has been kept on developing and analyzing the behaviour for conducting