(1. College of Textiles and Clothing, Qingdao University, Qingdao 266071, China) (2. College of Materials Science and Engineering, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing 100029, China)
Flexible sensors can convert external mechanical behaviors into electrical signals output to record relevant data changes during deformation and movement. Comparing with the traditional metal and semiconductor sensors, flexible sensors have excellent performances such as high stretchability, ability of multi-scale deformation, high recoverability, and so on, which can be applied to human body movement detection, steam detection, and robot operation control, etc., becoming the hot spot of the study of smart wearables. Flexible sensors are generally prepared by blending polymers and conductive fillers or surface finishing to make them flexible, stretchable, recoverable and conductive, so as to respond to external stimuli. This article gives a brief introduction to the polymer matrix and conductive fillers studied in recent years, a detailed overview of the preparation methods and performance of poly (styrene-butadiene-styrene) (SBS) based flexible sensors, and finally the problems on SBS flexible sensor development are discussed briefly.