Towards ultra-wide operation range and high sensitivity: Graphene film based pressure sensors for fingertips.

Remarkable research efforts have been devoted to replicate the tactile sensitivity of human skin. Unfortunately, so far flexible pressure sensors reported barely fit the tactile requirements for fingertips, which could endure a pressure over 100 kPa and also can sense a gentle touch. It is vital to develop flexible pressure sensors which can ensure high sensitivity and wide operation range simultaneously, to satisfy the demands of mimicking the pressure sensing function of fingertips. In this work, a mini-size, light-weight but high-performance graphene film based pressure sensor is presented. Owing to the advanced structure with fluctuations on surface and fluffy-layered structure in cross-section of the graphene film, this pressure sensor shows an extraordinary performance of high sensitivity of 10.39 kPa-1 (0–2 kPa), ultra-wide operation range up to 200 kPa, impressively stable repeatability, high working frequency, rapid response and recovery time. Moreover, the demonstrated results of the detection of traditional Chinese medicine wrist-pulse waveform and the bionic fingertip tactile sensors, suggest the great application potential of the obtain device in biomedical field and bionic skins field. • Free-standing graphene film as active material of pressure sensors. • Widest operation range among flexible piezoresistive pressure sensors. • High sensitivity of 10.39 kPa-1 in 0–2 kPa. • Practicable applications for whist pulse detection and bionic fingertips. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]