Flexible pressure sensor based on 3D printing MXene@dual-scale porous polymer

Abstract

Three-dimensional (3D) printing technologies can flexibly create polymer materials with highly intricate geometries, and those polymer materials with microscopic pore structures have advantages of ultra-flexibility, ultra-lightness, high porosity, deformability and high surface area, being suitable for the fabrication of flexible pressure sensors. But the related 3D printing techniques still have difficulties in directly printing microscopic pore structures due to the trade-offs between printing accuracy, printing time and printing volume. Herein, we propose a novel method of combining the radical-mediated polymerization-induced phase separation with digital-light-process 3D printing technique to prepare the dual-scale porous polymers with ultra-flexible, high elasticity and high surface area. By incorporating the conductive material MXene into this dual-scale porous polymer, we achieve significant improvements in electrical conductivity. When comparing to the traditional MXene-loaded flexible pressure sensors, our approach features with smart design, good elasticity and wide practicability. The as-prepared flexible pressure sensor has the advantages of high sensitivity (−0.5217 kPa−1), rapid dynamic response (response time of 159 ms) and superior stability (1,000 compression cycles), demonstrating its potential applications in wearable devices, health monitoring and soft robotics.