Abstract
There is a societal need for electronic materials to meet sustainability standards to facilitate the creation of easily disposed of green devices. Commonly, polymer-based materials applied to create strain-sensing devices utilize hazardous solvents and nonrecyclable resources that are unsuitable for these goals. Here, we demonstrate a simple system based on food-grade algae that we mix with a pristine, aqueous graphene suspension to create nanocomposite films that were processed into biodegradable hydrogels, again using food-based culinary products. We report our hydrogels to have record low Young’s moduli of ∼0.6 Pa for a nanocomposite and record high gauge factors of G ∼ 50 for a hydrogel system. Our sustainable graphene algae hydrogels were so sensitive that they could measure an object just 2 mg in mass, equivalent to a single rain droplet, impacting their surface.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1820–1827 |
| Number of pages | 8 |
| Journal | ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering |
| Volume | 11 |
| Issue number | 5 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 26 Jan 2023 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:A.K.A.A., K.L.D., C.W., and C.S.B. acknowledge funding from the Saudi Arabian Cultural Bureau and the University of Sussex Strategic Development Fund. C.S.B. thanks Oisín R. Boland for his help with revisions.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Authors. Published by American Chemical Society.
Keywords
- Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment
- General Chemical Engineering
- Environmental Chemistry
- General Chemistry
- biodegradable
- food-grade
- nanocomposite
- strain sensing
- impact sensing
- brown algae