Flexible Pressure Sensor Based on Photo Paper-Molded Micro-Structural AgNWs/PDMS Electrode

The novel flexible pressure sensor with skin-like stretchability and sensibility has attracted tremendous attention in academic and industrial world in recent years. And it also has demonstrated great potential in the applications of electronic skin and wearable devices. It is significant and challenging to develop a highly sensitive flexible pressure sensor with a simple, low energy consuming and low cost method. In this paper, the silver nanowires (AgNWs) as electrode material were synthesized by polyol process. The polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) was chosen as a flexible substrate and polyimide (PI) film as dielectric layer. The AgNWs based electrode was prepared in two methods. One is coating the AgNWs on photographic paper followed by in situ PDMS curing. Another one is suction filtration of the AgNWs suspension followed by glass slide transfer and PDMS curing. Then the capacitive pressure sensor was packaged in a sandwich structure with two face to face electrodes and a PI film in the middle. The sensitivity of the sensor as well as the micro-structure of the electrodes was compared and studied. The results indicate that the roughness of the electrode based on AgNWs/PDMS micro-structure plays an important role in the sensitivity of sensor. The as-prepared flexible pressure sensor demonstrates high sensitivity of 0.65kPa^-1. In addition, the fabrication method is simple, low energy consuming and low cost, which has great potential in the detection of pulse, heart rate, sound vibration and other tiny pressure.