Flexible and highly sensitive three-axis pressure sensors based on carbon nanotube/polydimethylsiloxane composite pyramid arrays

The development of flexible and sensitive three-axis pressure sensors is of great interest for various wearable applications, such as electronic skin, soft robotics, and health monitoring. This study aims to propose a highly sensitive and flexible pressure sensor that can measure three-axis pressure based on conductive microstructured carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) elastomer with a simple and large-scale fabrication method that uses a polymer wet etching process. The randomly exposed CNTs on the surface using PDMS wet etching improve the sensitivity of the pressure sensors. The fabricated sensors exhibit a high sensitivity of 1.39 kPa(-1) for a pressure range of 250 Pa, excellent limit of detection capability of 1.26 Pa, fast response time of within 52 ms, and high reliability of over 10,000 times of pressure loading/unloading. As an application, the pressure sensors are demonstrated using electronic skin on human fingers for the detection of the pressure levels and pattern recognition of distributed pressure. Moreover, to measure the three-axis pressure, pressurization tests are conducted using artificial fingers, demonstrating that the fabricated sensor can successfully measure the pressures applied along the three axes. (C) 2021 Published by Elsevier B.V.

Automated summary

This study presents a highly sensitive and flexible three-axis pressure sensor that can successfully measure three-axis pressure using a simple and large-scale fabrication method, demonstrating high sensitivity and reliability.