Self-sensing polymer composite containing a continuous and periodic graphene monolayer

Embedding the capability of self-sensing to polymeric materials provides tremendous opportunities for developing smart materials with highly important applications. However, a facile method that can introduce this capability to different polymers beyond strain sensing remains elusive. Here, we report a strategy of incorporating a continuous graphene sheet as an electric probe into polymer matrices for developing self-sensing composites. The resulted composite demonstrates impressively high conductivities of 290 S/m at a graphene volume fraction ( V G ) of 0.00068, a good electrical recovery at a cyclic elastic strain of 30% and a strain-sensing upper limit of 80%. Moreover, the glass transition, melting, and photodegradation process of different polymers can also be monitored in situ , and the corresponding glass transition temperature ( T g ) and melting point ( T m ) can be calculated. Our work paves the way for the development and application of novel self-sensing polymer composites with high sensitivity and versatility based on two-dimensional (2D) materials.