One of the main challenges during the integration of a carbon/polymer-based nanocomposite sensor on textile substrates is the fabrication of a homogeneous surface of the nanocomposite-based thin films, which play a major role in the reproducibility of the sensor. Characterizations are therefore required in every fabrication step to control the quality of the material preparation, deposition, and curing. As a result, microcharacterization methods are more suitable for laboratory investigations, and electrical methods can be easily implemented for in situ characterization within the manufacturing process. In this paper, several textile-based pressure sensors are fabricated at an optimized concentration of 0.3 wt.% of multiwalledcarbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) composite material in PDMS. We propose to use impedance spectroscopy for the characterization of both of the resistive behavior and capacitive behavior of the sensor at several frequencies and under different loads from 50 g to 500 g. The impedance spectra are fitted to a model composed of a resistance in series with a parallel combination of resistance and a constant phase element (CPE). The results show that the printing parameters strongly influence the impedance behavior under different loads. The deviation of the model parameter α of the CPE from the value 1 is strongly dependent on the nonhomogeneity of the sensor. Based on an impedance spectrum measurement followed by parameter extraction, the parameter α can be determined to realize a novel method for homogeneity characterization and in-line quality control of textile-integrated wearable sensors during the manufacturing process.
Keywords: constant phase element; impedance spectroscopy; multiwalled carbon nanotubes; pressure sensor; textile sensors; wearable sensors.