Skin-Inspired Piezoelectric Tactile Sensor Array with Crosstalk-Free Row plus Column Electrodes for Spatiotemporally Distinguishing Diverse Stimuli

Real-time detection and differentiation of diverse external stimuli with one tactile senor remains a huge challenge and largely restricts the development of electronic skins. Although different sensors have been described based on piezoresistivity, capacitance, and triboelectricity, and these devices are promising for tactile systems, there are few, if any, piezoelectric sensors to be able to distinguish diverse stimuli in real time. Here, a human skin-inspired piezoelectric tactile sensor array constructed with a multilayer structure and row+column electrodes is reported. Integrated with a signal processor and a logical algorithm, the tactile sensor array achieves to sense and distinguish the magnitude, positions, and modes of diverse external stimuli, including gentle slipping, touching, and bending, in real time. Besides, the unique design overcomes the crosstalk issues existing in other sensors. Pressure sensing and bending sensing tests show that the proposed tactile sensor array possesses the characteristics of high sensitivity (7.7 mV kPa(-1)), long-term durability (80 000 cycles), and rapid response time (10 ms) (less than human skin). The tactile sensor array also shows a superior scalability and ease of massive fabrication. Its ability of real-time detection and differentiation of diverse stimuli for health monitoring, detection of animal movements, and robots is demonstrated.

Automated summary

This study introduces a piezoelectric tactile sensor array inspired by human skin, capable of real-time sensing and differentiation of various external stimuli in terms of magnitude, positions, and modes. The sensor array exhibits high sensitivity, long-term durability, and rapid response time, as well as scalability and ease of mass production. Its application potential includes health monitoring, detection of animal movements, and robotics.