Abstract
Flexible sensors are highly desirable for tactile sensing and wearable devices. Previous researches of smart elements have focused on flexible pressure or temperature sensors. However, realizing material identification remains a challenge. Here, we report a multifunctional sensor composed of hydrophobic films and graphene/polydimethylsiloxane sponges. By engineering and optimizing sponges, the fabricated sensor exhibits a high-pressure sensitivity of >15.22 per kilopascal, a fast response time of <74 millisecond, and a high stability over >3000 cycles. In the case of temperature stimulus, the sensor exhibits a temperature-sensing resolution of 1 kelvin via the thermoelectric effect. The sensor can generate output voltage signals after physical contact with different flat materials based on contact-induced electrification. The corresponding signals can be, in turn, used to infer material properties. This multifunctional sensor is excellent in its low cost and material identification, which provides a design concept for meeting the challenges in functional electronics.
Highlights
Humans can apperceive pressure and temperature and deduce their material properties while applying contact between objects and skin [1]
Electronic skins and flexible sensors have been implemented in robotics and wearable health-monitoring devices to detect ambient changes of strain, vibration, and the direction of applied pressure [7,8,9,10,11,12,13]
We investigated the influence of the detached distance and the temperature of the fluorinated ethylene propylene (FEP) membrane
Summary
Humans can apperceive pressure and temperature and deduce their material properties while applying contact between objects and skin [1]. Sundaram et al [23] recently demonstrated a scalable tactile glove that can perceive individual objects by deep convolution neural networks. These approaches have promoted the performance boundaries for identifying objects, their potential to infer smooth materials and further improve their capability may be limited by the use of grasping signals and complex algorithms. We present a multifunctional, tactile self-powered sensor that enables pressure, temperature, and material sensing. The key concept of our device lies in inferring material properties based on generated electric signals between the PTFE film and objects. This work opens up new paths for using self-powered sensors in multifunctional tactile sensing
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