Rich lamellar crystal baklava-structured PZT/PVDF piezoelectric sensor toward individual table tennis training

Real-time monitoring of interaction between ball and racket can provide the extremely important information for high quality guidance of individual table tennis training. However, the existing visual monitoring system is hard to reflect the specific interaction force and accurate hit position. Here, we design a self-powered rich lamellar crystal baklava-structured PZT/PVDF piezoelectric sensor for real-time monitoring of table tennis training and the scalable sports. This unique baklava-structured piezocomposite could be massively manufactured by a facile two step method of nonsolvent induced phase separation and hot-press process. As a result, the as-developed sensor exhibits preeminent sensitivity (6.38 mV/N) and ultrafast response time (21 ms). On this basis, we made a smart table tennis racket embedded with 6 x 6 units, which could real-timely fetch the hit location and contact force, then it could provide evaluation and individual guidance for the athletes training. Admittedly, this work not only opens a new way for real-time monitoring of impact location and force in table tennis training beyond current visual detection system, but also paves a new prospect for artificial intelligence electronics toward smart sports.