A new strategy for the fabrication of a flexible and highly sensitive capacitive pressure sensor

• Published in: Microsystems & nanoengineering Vol. 7; no. 1; pp. 100 - 12
• Main Authors: Qin, Ruzhan, Hu, Mingjun, Li, Xin, Liang, Te, Tan, Haoyi, Liu, Jinzhang, Shan, Guangcun
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 30.11.2021; Springer Nature B.V; Nature Publishing Group
• Subjects: 639/166/987; 639/925/927/511; Electrodes; Electronic devices; Electronic equipment; Engineering; Flexible components; Polyvinylpyrrolidone; Pressure; Pressure sensors; Sensitivity; Sensors; Speech recognition; Wearable technology; Wrist
• ISSN: 2055-7434; 2096-1030; 2055-7434
• DOI: 10.1038/s41378-021-00327-1

The development of flexible capacitive pressure sensors has wide application prospects in the fields of electronic skin and intelligent wearable electronic devices, but it is still a great challenge to fabricate capacitive sensors with high sensitivity. Few reports have considered the use of interdigital electrode structures to improve the sensitivity of capacitive pressure sensors. In this work, a new strategy for the fabrication of a high-performance capacitive flexible pressure sensor based on MXene/polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) by an interdigital electrode is reported. By increasing the number of interdigital electrodes and selecting the appropriate dielectric layer, the sensitivity of the capacitive sensor can be improved. The capacitive sensor based on MXene/PVP here has a high sensitivity (~1.25 kPa −1 ), low detection limit (~0.6 Pa), wide sensing range (up to 294 kPa), fast response and recovery times (~30/15 ms) and mechanical stability of 10000 cycles. The presented sensor here can be used for various pressure detection applications, such as finger pressing, wrist pulse measuring, breathing, swallowing and speech recognition. This work provides a new method of using interdigital electrodes to fabricate a highly sensitive capacitive sensor with very promising application prospects in flexible sensors and wearable electronics.