Development and characterization of a piezoresistive polyurethane/GNP coating for strain sensing applications
In this work a simple cost-effective process is described to obtain a highly piezoresistive coating, consisting of sprayable water-based polyurethane (PU) paint filled with graphene nanoplatelets (GNPs). We investigated the morphology of the produced nanomaterials (i.e. cross-section and top surface) using a Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscope (FE-SEM). The rheological features of the polymeric blend loaded with 3.5 wt% of GNPs were analyzed at different concentrations of water (up to 20 wt%) in order to achieve a viscosity suitable for air-spraying.