A wearable and highly sensitive pressure sensor with ultrathin gold nanowires

Abstract

Ultrathin gold nanowires are mechanically flexible yet robust, which are novel building blocks with potential applications in future wearable optoelectronic devices. Here we report an efficient, low-cost fabrication strategy to construct a highly sensitive, flexible pressure sensor by sandwiching ultrathin gold nanowire-impregnated tissue paper between two thin polydimethylsiloxane sheets. The entire device fabrication process is scalable, enabling facile large-area integration and patterning for mapping spatial pressure distribution. Our gold nanowires-based pressure sensors can be operated at a battery voltage of 1.5 V with low energy consumption (o30 mW), and are able to detect pressing forces as low as 13 Pa with fast response time (o17 ms), high sensitivity (41.14 kPa À 1 ) and high stability (450,000 loading-unloading cycles). In addition, our sensor can resolve pressing, bending, torsional forces and acoustic vibrations. The superior sensing properties in conjunction with mechanical flexibility and robustness enabled real-time monitoring of blood pulses as well as detection of small vibration forces from music.

Solution‐Processed Bilayer Dielectrics for Flexible Low‐Voltage Organic Field‐Effect Transistors in Pressure‐Sensing Applications

“…As a basic part of e‐skin, pressure sensors are attracting growing attention because they can detect tiny pressure change by converting an external force to electrical or other recognized signals 4, 5. This function makes them great potentials in wearable electronics, biomedical diagnostics, health monitoring, and so forth 6, 7, 8, 9. So far, various transduction methods such as piezoresistivity, capacitance, and piezoelectricity have been used for different types of pressure sensors and their integrated devices 6, 10, 11, 12.…”

3D Printing of Transparent and Conductive Heterogeneous Hydrogel–Elastomer Systems

“…[5][6][7][8] Although many stretchable conductors exist, including liquid metals, [9,10] nanowires, [11,12] nanoribbons [13] , pre-stretched elastomer fibers with conductive coatings, [14] and micro-cracked metals, [15,16] these materials have generally been unable to achieve high levels of optical transparency while maintaining high conductivities and stretchability; a feature that would enable their use in optogenetics [17] or allow optical imaging of the underlying substrate. Conventional strategies of incorporating metallic components with elastomers to attain stretchability also yield non-trivial failure modes such as liquid metal leakage [8] and hard-soft material interfacial failure [18] .…”

Blending Electronics with the Human Body: A Pathway toward a Cybernetic Future

“…To this end, Gong et al fabricated a wearable and highly sensitive pressure sensor by sandwiching ultrathin gold nanowires (AuNWs) between PDMS sheets 229. This system was able to detect pressures as low as 13 Pa with a response time of <17 ms, and sensitivity of 1.14 kPa −1 in the pressure range of 0–5 kPa.…”