Preparation of washable, highly sensitive and durable strain sensor based conductive double rib knitted fabric

Abstract

A strain sensor based nylon/spandex double rib elastic knitted fabric has been fabricated by coating graphene and adhesive. The morphology, conductivity and sensing property of treated fabric are investigated. The coated knit fabric exhibits a good conductivity of 15.65 S/m and the resulting strain sensors could detect the small strains of about 0.2% with gauge factor of 29.15. Within a strain range of 0-20%, the gauge factor is found as 28.64. It also shows excellent performance in terms of sensitivity, stability and durability over 5000 wash cycles, and could monitor small external deformations with a response time of 0.24s. Moreover, it has good washability.