Light‐Boosting Highly Sensitive Pressure Sensors Based on Bioinspired Multiscale Surface Structures

Abstract

Pressure sensors have attracted tremendous attention because of their potential applications in the fields of health monitoring, human-machine interfaces, artificial intelligence, and so on. Improving pressure-sensing performances, especially the sensitivity and the detection limit, is of great importance to expand the related applications, however it is still an enormous challenge so far. Herein, highly sensitive piezoresistive pressure sensors are reported with novel light-boosting sensing performances. Rose petal-templated positive multiscale millimeter/micro/nanostructures combined with surface wrinkling nanopatterns endow the assembled pressure sensors with outstanding pressure sensing performance, e.g. an ultrahigh sensitivity (70 KPa −1 , <0.5 KPa), an ultralow detection limit (0.88 Pa), a wide pressure detect ion range (from 0.88 Pa to 32 KPa), and a fast response time (30 ms). Remarkably, simple light illumination further enhances the sensitivity to 120 KPa −1 (<0.5 KPa) and lowers the detection limit to 0.41 Pa. Furthermore, the flexible light illumination offers unprecedented capabilities to spatiotemporally control any target in multiplexed pressure sensors for optically enhanced/tailorable sensing performances. This light-control strategy coupled with the introduction of bioinspired multiscale structures is expected to help design next generation advanced wearable electronic devices for unprecedented smart applications.

Direct coherent multi-ink printing of fabric supercapacitors

“…First, the pressure sensor based on the multiscale structured PPy/PDMS was achieved in accordance with our previously reported procedure ( 57 ). Then, the as-fabricated pressure sensor was wrapped around the 3D printing coaxial FASC device to form an integrated device.…”

Dynamic Reversible Evolution of Wrinkles on Floating Polymer Films under Magnetic Control

“…Surface wrinkling, as a very common phenomenon in nature [1], e.g., wrinkles on the human face and the surface of dried fruits, has attracted wide attention due to its diverse applications, including thin film metrology [2], stretchable electronics [3], anticounterfeiting [4], structured templates [5] and so on [6,7]. The surface wrinkling system is usually a bilayer system, with a stiff film attached to a compliant substrate.…”

Flexible Pressure Sensors for Biomedical Applications: From Ex Vivo to In Vivo

“…Flexible pressure sensors can be attached to the human body to capture different physiological parameters such as heart rate, [ 12 ] blood pressure, [ 13 ] and pulse rate. [ 14 ] Various internal pressure such as intracranial pressure [ 15 ] and intraocular pressure, [ 16 ] which are important health indicators, can also be detected by flexible pressure sensors. In addition, wearable flexible pressure sensors have prompted their new applications such as gait analysis, [ 17 ] tactile perception, [ 18 ] and voice recognition ( Figure ).…”