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Ultrasensitive Piezoresistive Pressure Sensors Based on Interlocked Micropillar Arrays

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Abstract

The development of wearable electronic skins is drawing many interests due to potential applications in prosthetic limbs, robotic skins, and human healthcare monitoring devices. Here, we demonstrate piezoresistive wearable electronic skins based on conductive composite elastomers with interlocked geometry of micropillar arrays. The interlocked micropillar arrays enable the huge variation of contact area and thus the contact resistance between interlocked micropillar arrays when they are deformed in response to external pressure stimuli. In this study, we show that the contact resistance is strongly affected by the variation of diameter, pitch size, and shape of micropillar arrays. The pressure sensor with optimized micropillar dimension shows an ultrahigh pressure sensitivity (−22.8 kPa−1) and response time (∼0.07 s). Finally, we demonstrate that the wearable electronic skin attached on the fingertip is capable of detecting the pressure and vibration signal simultaneously.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2011-0014965, NRF-2012K1A3A1A20031618), BK21 Plus Program (10Z20130011057), Korea Institute of Machinery & Materials (KIMM) (NK175B), and Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) (2E22112-11-249).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Energy and Chemical Engineering, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), Ulsan Metropolitan City, 689-798, Republic of Korea

    Jonghwa Park, Youngoh Lee, Seongdong Lim, Youngsu Lee & Hyunhyub Ko

  2. Department of Nature-Inspired Nanoconvergence Systems, Korea Institute of Machinery & Materials, Daejeon, 305-343, Republic of Korea

    Youngdo Jung & Hyuneui Lim

Authors
  1. Jonghwa Park
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  2. Youngoh Lee
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  3. Seongdong Lim
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  4. Youngsu Lee
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  5. Youngdo Jung
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  6. Hyuneui Lim
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  7. Hyunhyub Ko
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Correspondence to Hyunhyub Ko.

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Park, J., Lee, Y., Lim, S. et al. Ultrasensitive Piezoresistive Pressure Sensors Based on Interlocked Micropillar Arrays. BioNanoSci. 4, 349–355 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12668-014-0151-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12668-014-0151-8

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