Hsieh Gen-Wen, Chien Chih-Yang
Institute of Lighting and Energy Photonics, College of Photonics, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, 301, Gaofa 3rd Road, Section 2, Guiren District, Tainan 71150, Taiwan.
Institute of Photonic System, College of Photonics, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, 301, Section 2, Gaofa 3rd Road, Guiren District, Tainan 71150, Taiwan.
Polymers (Basel). 2023 Sep 19;15(18):3816. doi: 10.3390/polym15183816.
In recent years, the implementation of wearable and biocompatible tactile sensing elements with sufficient response into healthcare, medical detection, and electronic skin/amputee prosthetics has been an intriguing but challenging quest. Here, we propose a flexible all-polyurethane capacitive tactile sensor that utilizes a salt crystal-templated porous elastomeric framework filling with silver nanowire as the composite dielectric material, sandwiched by a set of polyurethane films covering silver nanowire networks as electrodes. With the aids of these cubic air pores and conducting nanowires, the fabricated capacitive tactile sensor provides pronounced enhancement of both sensor compressibility and effective relative dielectric permittivity across a broad pressure regime (from a few Pa to tens of thousands of Pa). The fabricated silver nanowire-porous polyurethane sensor presents a sensitivity improvement of up to 4-60 times as compared to a flat polyurethane device. An ultrasmall external stimulus as light as 3 mg, equivalent to an applied pressure of ∼0.3 Pa, can also be clearly recognized. Our all-polyurethane capacitive tactile sensor based on a porous dielectric framework hybrid with conducting nanowire reveals versatile potential applications in physiological activity detection, arterial pulse monitoring, and spatial pressure distribution, paving the way for wearable electronics and artificial skin.
近年来，将具有足够响应能力的可穿戴且生物相容的触觉传感元件应用于医疗保健、医学检测以及电子皮肤/截肢者假肢领域，一直是一个引人关注但具有挑战性的课题。在此，我们提出一种柔性全聚氨酯电容式触觉传感器，该传感器利用填充有银纳米线的盐晶体模板化多孔弹性体框架作为复合介电材料，由一组覆盖银纳米线网络的聚氨酯薄膜作为电极夹在中间。借助这些立方体形气孔和导电纳米线，所制备的电容式触觉传感器在很宽的压力范围（从几帕到数万帕）内，传感器的可压缩性和有效相对介电常数都有显著提高。与平面聚氨酯器件相比，所制备的银纳米线 - 多孔聚氨酯传感器的灵敏度提高了4至60倍。甚至像3毫克这样极轻的外部刺激，相当于约0.3帕的施加压力，也能被清晰识别。我们基于多孔介电框架与导电纳米线混合的全聚氨酯电容式触觉传感器在生理活动检测、动脉脉搏监测和空间压力分布方面展现出多种潜在应用，为可穿戴电子设备和人造皮肤铺平了道路。
