Facile and low-cost fabrication of humidity sensor using naturally available sepiolite nanofibers.

Duan, Zaihua; Jiang, Yadong; Zhao, Qiuni; Wang, Si; Yuan, Zhen; Zhang, Yajie; Liu, Bohao; Tai, Huiling

While a lot of effort are focusing on the enhancement of humidity sensing performances of humidity sensors, their fabrication with facile and low-cost methods are desirable as well. In this work, a humidity sensor based on naturally available nanomaterials sepiolite nanofibers (SNFs) was facilely fabricated without any expensive raw materials or complex processes. Characterization results show that the SNFs have natural slender nanofiber structure (diameter: 20-50 nm) and abundant hydrophilic functional group (-OH). Humidity sensing test results show that the SNFs humidity sensor has outstanding humidity sensing properties (i.e., large response, good linearity and repeatability) within the relative humidity range from 10.9% to 91.5% at room temperature (25 ï‚°C). This work offers a moderate and cost-effective strategy for the fabrication of high-performance humidity sensors by using the natural nanomaterials of SNFs.