3D-printed elastomer foam-based soft capacitive pressure sensors

Abstract

The field of tactile sensing has exploded in recent years with the development of sensors using a wide variety of composite materials and fabrication techniques to meet the varying requirement of applications such as robotics, wearable, and interactive systems. Often these applications require touch sensors over large areas, and this calls for a simple manufacturing route such as additive manufacturing. Herein we present fully 3D printed highly sensitive capacitive touch sensors with an elastomeric foam-based dielectric layer (a blend of PDMS and BaTiO3) and PEDOT: PSS and AgNWs composite based electrodes. The device is encapsulated with PDMS. The sensor was tested under dynamic and static conditions, and the sensitivity was found to be 0.918 %kPa <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">-1</sup> with excellent linearity (99.77%). The presented approach for realizing soft and flexible electronic skin (e-Skin) in one single automated step has potential to transform applications such as wearables, health monitoring, and rehabilitation with low-cost and easily manufacturable high-performance sensors.