A review on application of nanomaterials in flexible pressure sensors

Flexible pressure sensors are modern devices that play a pivoting role in flexible electronics technology due to their unique features, including bio-integrated circuits, biocompatibility, flexibility, and light weight. Over the past several years, numerous emerging nanomaterials driven by innovations in molecular nanosystems and representing outstanding electromechanical properties have been developing. This could pave the way for effectively addressing the need for higher performance and broadening the emerging applications of flexible pressure sensors. The progressive development of flexible pressure sensors highlights the necessity of reviewing and categorizing such advanced devices in order to open new avenues of innovation and thoughts. Herein, diverse angles of flexible pressure sensors, including their chemistry, signal conversion methods, and signal transfer performance, are reviewed and discussed. In particular, nanostructured flexible pressure sensors composed of nanomaterials like carbon black, carbon nanotubes, graphene, metal nanowires, transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), hexagonal boron nitride (hBN), 2D carbides and nitrides of transition metals (MXenes), and black phosphorus (BP) are summarized, together with their pros and cons are systematically discussed. Finally, this review deals with a number of key applications, including healthcare and biomedical fields, human-machine interfaces, robotics, and smart systems.