Flexible low-pressure sensors (<10 kPa) are required in areas as diverse as blood-pressure monitoring, human-computer interactions, robotics, and object detection. For applications, it is essential that these sensors combine flexibility, high sensitivity, robustness, and low production costs. Previous works involve surface micro-patterning, electronic amplification (OFET), and hydrogels. However, these solutions are limited as they involve complex processes, large bias voltages, large energy consumption, or are sensitive to evaporation. Here, we report a major advance to solve the challenge of scalable, efficient and robust e-skin. We present an unconventional capacitive sensor based on composite foam materials filled with conductive carbon black particles. Owing to the elastic buckling of the foam pores, the sensitivity exceeds 35 kPa −1 for pressure <0.2 kPa. These performances are one order of magnitude higher than the ones previously reported. These materials are low-cost, easy to prepare, and display high capacitance values, which are easy to measure using low-cost electronics. These materials pave the road for the implementation of e-skin in commercialized applications.

We present electrostrictive materials with excellent properties for vibrational energy harvesting applications. The developed materials consist of a porous carbon black composite, which is processed using water-in-oil emulsions. In combination with an insulating layer, the investigated structures exhibit a high effective relative dielectric permittivity (up to 182 at 100 Hz) with very low effective conductivity (down to 2.53 10-8 S m-1). They can generate electrical energy in response to mechanical vibrations with a power density of 0.38 W m-3 under an applied bias electric field of 32V. They display figures or merit for energy harvesting applications well above reference polymer materials in the field, including fluorinated co-and ter-polymers synthetized by heavy chemical processes. The production process of the present materials is based on non hazardous and low-cost chemicals. The soft dielectric materials are highly flexible (Young's modulus of ~1 MPa) making them also suited for highly sensitive capacitive sensors.