Graphene film development on flexible substrate using a new technique: temperature dependency of gauge factor for graphene-based strain sensors

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to develop a new simple technique to synthesize graphene film on a flexible polyethylene terephthalate (PET) substrate and applied as a strain sensor.

Design/methodology/approach

Graphene film was synthesized using laser treatment of graphene oxide (GO) film deposited on PET substrate. A universal laser system was used to simultaneously reduce and pattern the GO film into laser reduced graphene oxide (LRGO) film.

Findings

The laser treatment synthesizes a multilayer graphene film with overlapped flakes, which shows structure integrity, mechanical flexibility and electrical conductivity of 1,330 S/m. The developed LRGO/PET film was used to fabricate a high sensitivity strain sensor. The sensitivity and temperature dependency of its gauge factor (GF) was examined at applied strains up to 0.25 per cent and operating temperatures up to 80°C. The fabricated sensor shows stable GF of approximately 78 up to 60°C with standard error of the mean not exceeding approximately ± 0.2.

Originality/value

The proposed method offers a new simple and productive technique of fabricating large-scale graphene-based flexible devices at a low cost.

Citation

Sayed, S., Gamil, M., Fath El-Bab, A., Nakamura, K., Tsuchiya, T., Tabata, O. and Abd El-Moneim, A. (2016), "Graphene film development on flexible substrate using a new technique: temperature dependency of gauge factor for graphene-based strain sensors", Sensor Review, Vol. 36 No. 2, pp. 140-147. https://doi.org/10.1108/SR-07-2015-0114