Advanced Morphological and Material Engineering for High-Performance Interfacial Iontronic Pressure Sensors.

Abstract

High-performance flexible pressure sensors are crucial for applications such as wearable electronics, interactive systems, and healthcare technologies. Among these, iontronic pressure sensors have garnered particular attention due to their superior sensitivity, enabled by the giant capacitance variation of the electric double layer (EDL) at the ionic-electronic interface under deformation. Key advancements, such as incorporating microstructures into ionic layers and employing diverse materials, have significantly improved sensor properties like sensitivity, accuracy, stability, and response time. This review highlights advancements in flexible EDL pressure sensors, focusing on structural designs and material engineering. These strategies are tailored to optimize key metrics such as sensitivity, detection limit, linearity, stability, response speed, hysteresis, transparency, wearability, selectivity, and multifunctionality. Key fabrication techniques, including micropatterning and externally assisted methods, are reviewed, along with strategies for sensor comparison and guidelines for selecting appropriate sensors. Emerging applications in healthcare, environmental and aerodynamic sensing, human-machine interaction, robotics, and machine learning-assisted intelligent sensing are explored. Finally, this review discusses the challenges and future directions for advancing EDL-based pressure sensors.