Ionic liquid enabled flexible transparent polydimethylsiloxane sensors for both strain and temperature sensing

Stretchable strain sensor and temperature sensor are two essential components in e-skins and wearable electronics. Although great progress has been made in this field recently, some challenges like the linear sensitivity of the output signal to stimuli and transparency of the sensor have still not been overcome. Herein, we select the ionic liquid to replace the traditional solid conductive nanoparticles as the sensing components to be encapsulated in the tailored cavity inside the stretchable polydimethylsiloxane thin film to design the stretchable and transparent multifunctional sensors. This sensor exhibits various merits, such as high flexibility, transparency, highly sensitive to strain and temperature, and outstanding monotonicity and linearity of the outputted signals, which can be the promising candidate of stretchable strain sensor and temperature sensor in various fields. More interestingly, a feature of this sensor is that the resistance is only slightly increased under large tensile strain, which makes it possible for serving as the stretchable conductor simultaneously. This work proposes a new strategy that allows the creation of multifunctional sensor with high transparency, high sensitivity, and excellent linearity of the signal. Graphical abstract