Nested-Cell Architecture and Molecular Surface Modification Enabled 10 Megapascals Range High Sensitivity Flexible Pressure Sensors for Application in Extreme Environment

Abstract

Flexible pressure sensors with high sensitivity over a broad sensing range are of great value in daily life and highly desired in various extreme environment, from human motion inspection to heavy industrial robots to high energy radiation and extremely cold/high temperature environments. However, it remains a significant challenge for a single pressure sensor to simultaneously possess high sensitivity and broad detection range due to the trade-off between these two properties. Here, a high-performance pressure sensor is developed based on flexible modified silicon rubber/functionalized carbon nanotube (MSR/FCNT). The designed nested-cell architecture and molecular surface modification strategy endow the pressure sensor with high sensitivity (>28 kPa−1) over 10 MPa sensing range, an ultralow detection limit (≈0.94 Pa), an ultrahigh pressure resolution (0.0075%) at a pressure of 3 MPa, and a low fatigue over 10 000 repetitive cycles even at an extremely high pressure of 5 MPa. Furthermore, the resulting sensor presents excellent durability after freezing at extreme cold temperature (−80 °C) as well as resistance to high temperature (200 °C) and high-energy X-ray radiation. The proposed nested-cell architecture is a generic strategy for porous materials to achieve broad range high sensitivity.