Conductive Polymer Composites Strain Sensor Based on Hybrid Fibrous Membrane and 0D‐1D Silver Synergistic Sensing Layer for Motion Detection

ABSTRACT Wearable flexible resistive sensors developed with conductive polymer composites (CPCs) have grown rapidly in recent years. However, these sensors suffer from poor breathability, which affects comfort and causes difficulties in balancing sensitivity and response range. In this paper, a composite fibrous membrane substrate was prepared using thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) and styrene‐butadiene‐styrene (SBS) block copolymer as raw materials by electrostatic spinning. Subsequently, 1D silver nanowires (AgNWs) and 0D silver nanoparticles (AgNps) were loaded onto the surface of the substrate via scraping and magnetron sputtering techniques, respectively, to obtain TPU/SBS/AgNWs/AgNps (TS/A w /A p ) flexible strain sensors. The TPU/SBS composite fibrous membrane substrate has excellent mechanical properties (tensile strength of 28.86 MPa, elongation at break of 814.61%) and great breathability (> 180 mm/s). The TS/A w /A p strain sensor has good sensing performance (GF = 108.85), a response range reaching up to 300%, speedy response functionality (response time: 106.3 ms and recovery time: 147.3 ms), and is able to capture very small deformations (0.1% strain), more than 3000 cycles in long‐term use. There are also many practical applications for the TS/A w /A p sensors in human motion detection. The exploration of this sensor may provide a strategy for the further development of wearable devices and flexible electronics.