Silly putty and Graphene?

[Ykick]

http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/12/09/504823222/adding-a-funny-form-of-carbon-to-silly-putty-creates-a-heart-monitor

Turns out making a composite material using graphene and Silly Putty gives you a new material that is still runny and bouncy, but now conducts electricity and is extremely sensitive to pressure. Press on it just the tiniest amount, and you change its electrical resistance.

Perhaps detect puffing and/or monitor/maintain ideal assembly pressure of pouch cells?

 

[MrDude_1]

Perhaps detect puffing and/or monitor/maintain ideal assembly pressure of pouch cells?

for an actual application, especially a critical one, I would just use one of the thousands of off-the-shelf sensors that do that exact same thing. :lol:

playdoh/graphite homemade things are great for teaching kids (and adults) about electricity, but they hardly approach the accuracy or consistency of a normal mass produced sensor that works off the same principles.

 

[Voltron]

"The researchers mixed graphene flakes, roughly 20 atomic layers thick and up to 800 nanometers long, with homemade Silly Putty...to produce dark grey G-putty that conducted electricity...its electrical resistance changed dramatically when the researchers applied even tiny amounts of pressure. The putty was at least ten times more sensitive than other nanocomposite sensors.
...
When they wired up a lump of G-putty and held it to a student’s neck, the pulse from his carotid artery was...visible in those resistance changes...the pulse profile was so detailed that they could convert it into an accurate blood-pressure reading. The sensor could...monitor respiration when placed on the student’s chest. And...it recorded the individual steps of a spider weighing just 20 milligrams.

 

[amberwolf]

Sounds like the perfect start to a full-skin touch sensor for robotics, aircraft, etc.

Find a replacement for the putty that is durable and permanent, and use it for sensing airflow over a plane's entire skin, and not only be able to adjust flight surfaces on-the-go for instant airflow response to changing conditions, rather than processing a multitude of other sensors to determine this, but also know the *condition* of the skin, and whether there are any structural failures in progress over time (slowly or quickly).

For robotics it could be used as a full-body sensor to know what it's in contact with and how, for the perfect grip on fragile objects without worry of dropping or crushing them, for detecting even the slightest collision, and if the skin is flexible for position sensing of the limbs/body/etc inside the skin.

So many other possibilities I can imagine like that.....

 

[cal3thousand]

The most sensitive strain gauge in the world could be made with this tech.