Strengthened, Antibacterial, and Conductive Flexible Film for Humidity and Strain Sensors

With the development of artificial intelligence, people are not satisfied with the traditional conductive materials and tend to focus on stretchable and flexible electronic systems. Flexible conductive rubbers have great potential applications in wearable strain sensors. However, the rapid propagation of bacteria during the use of wearable sensors may be an ineluctable threat to humans’ health. Herein, a conductive rubber film is fabricated based on carboxylic styrene–butadiene rubber (XSBR), citric acid (CA), and silver nitrate (AgNO3) via a convenient approach, where Ag nanoparticles (Ag NPs) are in situ reduced without sintering at elevated temperatures. The resultant films exhibit many desirable and impressive features, such as strengthened mechanical properties, flexibility, and conductivity. More importantly, the Ag NP flexible conductive films exhibit excellent antibacterial activity against Escherichia coli (Gram-negative bacteria) and Staphylococcus aureus (Gram-positive bacteria), which have potential applications as flexible antibacterial materials to monitor movements of the human body in real time. Also, because of the hygroscopicity of CA, the resistance of our conductive film is sensitive to various humidities, which can be applied in the humidity sensor.