Nanoengineering Ultrathin Flexible Pressure Sensors with Superior Sensitivity and Wide Range via Nanocomposite Structures

Flexible pressure sensors have attracted great interest due to their bendable, stretchable, and lightweight characteristics compared to rigid pressure sensors. However, the contradictions among sensitivity, detection limit, thickness, and detection range restrict the performance of flexible pressure sensors and the scope of their applications, especially for scenarios requiring conformal fitting, such as rough surfaces such as the human skin. This paper proposes a novel flexible pressure sensor by combining the nanoengineering strategy and nanocomposite structures. The nanoengineering strategy utilizes the bending deformation of nanofilm instead of the compression of the active layer to achieve super high sensitivity and low detection limit; meanwhile, the nanocomposite structures introduce distributed microbumps that delay the adhesion of nanofilm to enlarge the detection range. As a result, this device not only ensures an ultrathin thickness of 1.6 μm and a high sensitivity of 84.29 kPa