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High-repeatability macro-porous sponge piezoresistive pressure sensor with polydopamine/polypyrrole composite coating based on in situ polymerization method

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Abstract

High-stability piezoresistive sensors are an important part of smart wearable systems. In this study, an in situ polymerization method was used to polymerize a layer of polydopamine (PDA) and poly-pyrrole (PPy) on the surface of the macro-porous sponge (MPS). The deposition of PDA was done using para toluene sulfonic acid (p-TSA), the pH of the solution being used to control the thickness of the PDA, that followed by PPy coating. The thin layer of PDA effects to give better adherent in-between MPS surface and PPy coating. The morphology, chemical composition, and pressure-sensing properties of the fabricated PDA/PPy pressure sensors have been widely investigated. The experimental results show that the PDA/PPy-MPS pressure sensor with the concentration of p-TSA is 0.05 M with PDA coating shows better performance in the pressure range of 1–10 kPa. The pressure sensor performance of PDA (0.05 M p-TSA)/PPy-MPS near 1000 pressure cycles related to average sensitivity, hysteresis, and non-linear errors are 7.20 ± 2.46 kPa−1, 13.51 ± 0.03%, and 3.30 ± 0.59%, respectively. The repeatability error of up and down near conductive signals are reported as 2.70 ± 0.93% and 2.25 ± 0.63%. Its minimum resistance is reported as 9.94 Ω when the pressure increased up to 119 kPa. The developed applications of PDA/PPy-MPS show promising ability to use as a pressure sensor and switching element in smart wearable devices.

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More generally, the authors declare that the data used in this study to arrive at the findings are available within the article or from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Funding

The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support provided by the Ministry of Science and Technology National Key R & D Program “Technology Winter Olympics” Key Special Project (2019YFF0302100), the Natural Science Foundation of Tianjin (Grant no. 18JCYBJC18500), the Postdoctoral Science Foundation of China (Grant no. 2016M591390), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant no. 51473122).

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Author notes

  1. Dilini S. W. Gunasekara and Yin He contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Textile Science and Engineering, Tiangong University, Tianjin, 300387, China

    Dilini S. W. Gunasekara, Yin He, Shu Fang, Liduan Zhao & Hao Liu

  2. Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology, Beijing, 100029, China

    Li Liu

  3. Institute of Smart Wearable Electronic Textiles, Tiangong University, Tianjin, 300387, China

    Yin He & Hao Liu

  4. Key Laboratory of Advanced Textile Composite Materials, Ministry of Education of China, Tianjin, 300387, China

    Yin He & Hao Liu

Authors
  1. Dilini S. W. Gunasekara
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  2. Yin He
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  3. Shu Fang
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  4. Liduan Zhao
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  5. Hao Liu
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  6. Li Liu
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Correspondence to Hao Liu or Li Liu.

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Future investigations are necessary to validate the conclusions that can be drawn from this study and the authors declare they have no conflicts of interest.

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Gunasekara, D.S.W., He, Y., Fang, S. et al. High-repeatability macro-porous sponge piezoresistive pressure sensor with polydopamine/polypyrrole composite coating based on in situ polymerization method. Appl. Phys. A 126, 789 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00339-020-03962-z

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