Hierarchical elastomer tuned self-powered pressure sensor for wearable multifunctional cardiovascular electronics

Abstract

Wearable pressure sensors, as essential components of flexible wearable electronics, may play important roles in early diagnosis and mortality prevention for cardiovascular healthcare. However, traditional self-powered pressure sensors can hardly obtain both high sensitivity and wide pressure range, which makes perceiving both cardiac and vascular signals in a wearable self-powered way challenging as these physiological signals not only have imperceptible changes but also span a broad pressure range. Here, we develop a flexible hierarchical elastomer tuned self-powered pressure sensor, which achieves both high-sensitivity and wide pressure range, showing a high sensitivity of 7.989 V kPa−1 and wide pressure range of 0.1–60 kPa simultaneously. Fast response (40 ms) and high signal noise ratio (38 db) with good stability are also achieved. We demonstrate that the self-powered pressure sensor can not only sensitively monitor pulse, artery and heart condition but also monitor the wide range blood pressure, which satisfies the diverse needs of wearable cardiovascular healthcare. As most of the pressure related to human interface is less than 50 kPa, we envision the sensor holds great potential in wearable electronics, mobile healthcare and human-machine interaction.