High conductive graphene assembled films with porous micro-structure for freestanding and ultra-low power strain sensors

Graphene emerges as an ideal material for constructing high-performance strain sensors, due to its superior mechanical property and high conductivity. However, in the process of assembling graphene into macroscopic materials, its conductivity decreases significantly. Also, tedious fabrication process hinders the application of graphene-based strain sensors. In this work, we report a freestanding graphene assembled film (GAF) with high conductivity ((2.32 ± 0.08) × 105 S m−1). For the sensitive materials of strain sensors, it is higher than most of reported carbon nanotube and graphene materials. These advantages enable the GAF to be an ultra-low power consumption strain sensor for detecting airflow and vocal vibrations. The resistance of the GAF remains unchanged with increasing temperature (20–100 ℃), exhibiting a good thermal stability. Also, the GAF can be used as a strain sensor directly without any flexible substrates, which greatly simplifies the fabrication process in comparison with most reported strain sensors. Additionally, the GAF used as a pressure sensor with only ~4.7 μW power is investigated. This work provides a new direction for the preparation of advanced sensors with ultra-low power consumption, and the development of flexible and energy-saving electronic devices.