Coupling Tension and Shear for Highly Sensitive Graphene-Based Strain Sensors

TL;DR

This paper presents a highly sensitive graphene-based strain sensor that detects coupled tension and shear deformation through variations in electronic conductance, showing significant changes under different strains and angles.

Contribution

It introduces a novel graphene nanoribbon sensor design that effectively couples tension and shear effects, enhancing strain sensitivity beyond previous methods.

Findings

Conductance decreases with increasing strain, especially beyond 2.5%.

Relative conductance proportion varies from 60% to 90% as strain and angle change.

Sensor exhibits smooth conductance variation with gate voltage, unlike pristine graphene.

Abstract

We report, based on its variation in electronic transport to coupled tension and shear deformation, a highly sensitive graphene-based strain sensor consisting of an armchair graphene nanoribbon (AGNR) between metallic contacts. As the nominal strain at any direction increases from 2.5 to 10%, the conductance decreases, particularly when the system changes from the electrically neutral region. At finite bias voltage, both the raw conductance and the relative proportion of the conductance depends smoothly on the gate voltage with negligible fluctuations, which is in contrast to that of pristine graphene. Specifically, when the nominal strain is 10% and the angle varies from 0 degree to 90 degree, the relative proportion of the conductance changes from 60 to 90%.