Flexible fully printed temperature sensor based on PVC/CB composite

Abstract

Recently, flexible wearable electrical sensors that can be comfortably attached to human body and soft robotics have attracted a widely attention. This work present a flexible fully printed temperature sensor based on the polyvinyl chloride/carbon black (PVC/CB) composite films fabricated on polyethylene terephthalate (PET) substrate by screen-printing method. The PVC/CB temperature-sensitive functional printing paste was prepared. The flexible fully printed temperature sensor shows high temperature sensitivity, excellent linearity of the temperature dependent resistance (correlation coefficient R <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> equal to 0.9996) and good thermal cycling repeatability. In addition, we showed that the flexible fully printed temperature sensor can detect the breathing state of volunteer applying for a respiratory monitoring device. The developed flexible printed temperature sensors will have a great potential applications in environmental monitoring, wearable electronic, flexible healthcare devices.