Strain Sensor with Both Wide Sensing Range and High Sensitivity Based on Braided Graphene Belts.

Recent years have witnessed significant development of flexible strain sensors in a variety of fields. Nevertheless, the challenge of integrating a broad sensing range (>50%) with a high sensitivity (GF value >100 over the entire sensing strain) in one single flexible strain sensor still exists. Herein, we prepared a flexible strain sensor based on braided graphene belts (BGBs) and dragon skin. Such a BGBs strain sensor exhibits an integration of wide sensing range (up to 55.55%) and high sensitivity (GF value>175.16 through the entire working range). Besides, this BGBs strain sensor also demonstrates minute monitoring limit (0.01%), low hysteresis and overshoot behaviors, and reliable cycling repeatability (>6000 cycles). The SEM microscopy observations reveal that the skew angle and intersection regions of graphene belts are mainly responsible for the desirable sensing performance. Finally, the successful detection of full-range human motions, from subtle actions to vigorously joints-related movements, reflects great potential of the BGBs strain sensor in the application of wearable instrument.