A Study on Nanomaterials Incorporated Smart Materials for Flexible and Wearable Sensors

The latest advancements in electronic sensor technology are pushing the need for materials that are not only lightweight but also mechanically flexible, stretchable, and budget-friendly. That's where polymer-based composites come into play. By reinforcing them with hybrid nanomaterials, these composites deliver outstanding electrical properties while being light, flexible, and stretchable. As a result, flexible composites made from polymers and nanomaterials are gaining traction as the next generation of smart materials. They're being extensively researched for a variety of applications, including wearable electronic devices, supercapacitors, flexible displays, touch screens, health monitoring systems, motion detection, facial recognition, and humanmachine interfaces, among others. In this study, we showcase the fabrication and testing of flexible composites and sandwich structures that incorporate nanomaterials with poly (dimethyl siloxane) (PDMS) for use in wearable sensors. We explored two different methods to create these PDMS-based flexible materials. The first method involved mixing various weight percentages of nanomaterials into the PDMS polymer matrix using a straightforward solution mixing process. The second method focused on creating a sandwich structure made of PDMS/nanomaterials coated parafilm/PDMS through a simple and cost-effective technique.