A Wide-Range, Highly Stable Intelligent Flexible Pressure Sensor Based on Micro-Wrinkled SWCNT/rGO-PDMS with Efficient Thermal Shrinkage.

Abstract

Flexible pressure sensors have drawn growing attention in areas like human physiological signal monitoring and human-computer interaction. Nevertheless, it still remains a significant challenge to guarantee their long-term stability while attaining a wide detection range, a minute pressure testing limit, and high sensitivity. Inspired by the wrinkles on animal skins, this paper introduces a flexible pressure sensor with wrinkled microstructures. This sensor is composed of a composite of reduced graphene oxide (rGO), single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs), and polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). After optimizing the proportion of the composite materials, the flexible pressure sensor was manufactured using highly efficient heat-shrinkable films. It has a sensitivity as high as 15.364 kPa^-1. Owing to the wrinkled microstructures, the sensor can achieve an ultra-wide pressure detection range, with the maximum reaching 1150 kPa, and is capable of detecting water wave vibrations at the minimum level. Moreover, the wrinkled microstructures were locked by PDMS. The sensor acquired waterproof performance and its mechanical stability was enhanced. Even after 18,000 cycles of repeated loading and unloading, its performance remained unchanged. By combining with an artificial neural network, high-precision recognition of different sounds and postures when grasping different objects was realized, with the accuracies reaching 98.3333% and 99.1111%, respectively. Through the integration of flexible WIFI, real-time wireless transmission of sensing data was made possible. In general, the studied sensor can facilitate the application of flexible pressure sensors in fields such as drowning monitoring, remote traditional Chinese medicine, and intelligent voice.