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Wide measurement range and high sensitivity spongy MWCNT/polydimethylsiloxane pressure sensor based on a single-electrode enhanced triboelectric nanogenerator

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Abstract

Flexible pressure sensors have broad application prospects, such as human motion monitoring and personalized recognition. However, their applicability is limited by complex structures, low output performance, low sensitivity, and narrow measurement range. In this study, we report a single-electrode spongy triboelectric sensor (SSTS) mainly composed of spongy composite multi-walled carbon nanotubes/polydimethylsiloxane (MWCNT/PDMS) film and conductive fabric, which can simultaneously generate contact electrification and electrostatic induction coupling in a single-electrode contact-separation mode. The SSTS combines the triboelectric effect, properties of doping material, and spongy porous structure (soft sugar as a sacrificial template). An SSTS with an MWCNT content of 10 wt% and a porosity of 64% exhibits high sensitivity, a wide measurement range, and excellent linearity. It also displays two sensitivity regions (slopes): 1.324 V/kPa from 1.5 to 28 kPa in the low-pressure range and 0.096 V/kPa from 28 to 316.5 kPa in the high-pressure range, with linearities of 0.980 and 0.979, respectively. Furthermore, the SSTS delivers a high-performance output and high stability, thus enhancing the monitoring of hand pressure changes, human movement, personalized spatial recognition, and other detection tasks. This new strategy for human motion monitoring shows great potential in the healthcare fields, sports rehabilitation, and human-computer interactions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Science and Technology on Electronic Test and Measurement Laboratory, North University of China, Taiyuan, 030051, China

    Xin Xie, XiaoJuan Hou, JianWei Hou, Jie Zhang, XiaoXue Bi, WenPing Geng, JiLiang Mu, Jian He & XiuJian Chou

  2. School of Software, North University of China, Taiyuan, 030051, China

    Shuo Qian

Authors
  1. Xin Xie
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  2. XiaoJuan Hou
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  3. Shuo Qian
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  4. JianWei Hou
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  5. Jie Zhang
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  6. XiaoXue Bi
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  8. JiLiang Mu
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  9. Jian He
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to XiaoJuan Hou or Jian He.

Additional information

This work was supported in part by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2019YFB2004802), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 62171414, 52175554, 52205608, 62171415 & 62001431), the Fundamental Research Program of Shanxi Province (Grant Nos. 20210302123059 & 20210302124610), and the Program for the Innovative Talents of Higher Education Institutions of Shanxi.

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Xie, X., Hou, X., Qian, S. et al. Wide measurement range and high sensitivity spongy MWCNT/polydimethylsiloxane pressure sensor based on a single-electrode enhanced triboelectric nanogenerator. Sci. China Technol. Sci. 66, 1734–1745 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11431-022-2362-y

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