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Bioinspired flexible piezoresistive sensor for high-sensitivity detection of broad pressure range

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Abstract

The human skin has the ability to sense tactile touch and a great range of pressures. Therefore, in prosthetic or robotic systems, it is necessary to prepare pressure sensors with high sensitivity in a wide measurement range to provide human-like tactile sensation. Herein, we developed a flexible piezoresistive pressure sensor that is highly sensitive in a broad pressure range by using lotus leaf micropatterned polydimethylsiloxane and multilayer superposition. By superposing four layers of micropatterned constructive substrates, the multilayer piezoresistive pressure sensor achieves a broad pressure range of 312 kPa, a high sensitivity of 2.525 kPa−1, a low limit of detection (LOD) of <12 Pa, and a fast response time of 45 ms. Compared with the traditional flexible pressure sensor, the pressure range of this sensor can be increased by at least an order of magnitude. The flexible piezoresistive pressure sensor also shows high robustness: after testing for at least 1000 cycles, it shows no sign of fatigue. More importantly, these sensors can be potentially applied in various human motion detection scenarios, including tiny pulse monitoring, throat vibration detection, and large under-feet pressure sensing. The proposed fabrication strategy may guide the design of other kinds of multifunctional sensors to improve the detection performance.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Project of National Key Research and Development Program of China (No. 2018YFC2001300), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 52175271, 51822504, 52021003, 52105299, 51905207, and 91948302), Science and Technology Development Plan Project of Jilin Province (No. 20210508057RQ), Program for Jinlin University Science and Technology Innovative Research Team (No. 2017TD-04), and Scientific Research Project of Education Department of Jilin Province (No. JJKH20211084KJ).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center of Reproductive Medicine, Center of Prenatal Diagnosis, The First Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun, 130021, China

    Meng Wang

  2. The Key Laboratory of Bionic Engineering, Ministry of Education, Jilin University, Changchun, 130025, China

    Meng Wang, Hao Zhang, Han Wu, Suqian Ma, Lei Ren, Yunhong Liang & Zhiwu Han

  3. School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Jilin University, Changchun, 130025, China

    Chunbao Liu

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  1. Meng Wang
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Contributions

SQM was involved in conceptualization; MW contributed to funding acquisition; MW, HZ, YHL, and LR were involved in investigation; HW contributed to project administration; YHL was involved in supervision; MW, HZ, SQM, and YHL contributed to visualization; CBL, MW, and ZWH were involved in writing—original draft; MW and SQM contributed to writing—review and editing.

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Correspondence to Suqian Ma, Lei Ren or Yunhong Liang.

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Additional informed consent was obtained from all participants for which identifying information is included in this article. All procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2008 (5). Informed consent was obtained from all patients for being included in the study.

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Wang, M., Zhang, H., Wu, H. et al. Bioinspired flexible piezoresistive sensor for high-sensitivity detection of broad pressure range. Bio-des. Manuf. 6, 243–254 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42242-022-00220-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42242-022-00220-4

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