Supercapacitor Based Approach Towards Development of Graphene Sensors

Abstract

Graphene has been extensively studied and used in energy storage applications like Supercapacitors owing to its high Electric Double Layer Capacitance (EDLC). However, this property of Graphene has not been used in Sensor technology. We report a novel approach for the development of Graphene Capacitive sensors by adopting the Supercapacitor property of Graphene. Graphene was synthesized by Electro-exfoliation process followed by Hydrazine hydrate reduction. The obtained material was characterized using XRD and FE-SEM to ensure structural and morphological properties. An Interdigitized Electrode (IDE) pattern was prepared with reduced Exfoliated Graphene (rEG) as electrode and PVA-H <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> SO <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">4</sub> electrolytic gel was used to realize EDLC. The fabricated strain sensing device was found to have a gauge factor of 97.3. This low cost, flexible, highly sensitive and easy to fabricate device opens up a new area of capacitance based sensors with wide applications in the chemical & automotive industry, healthcare, robotics, aerospace, mining etc.