Simultaneous sensing of touch and pressure by using highly elastic e-fabrics

Abstract

In recent years, electronic skins have been widely studied for human monitoring systems. This research field needs multi-sensing points for large deformation, strong recovery, and mass production methods. Toward these aims, the fabrication of e-fabric skins made from a capacitive touch sensing layer and a capacitive pressure sensing layer is presented in the paper. Due to the high elasticity of the dielectric layer of the spacer fabric, this structure exhibits a very fast recovery time (6 ms), low hysteresis (<5%), and high cycling stability (>20,000 times). Besides, the stacking structure of the electrode layers (single-wall carbon nanotube/silver paste) is due to good durability even under large deformations (grasping, bending, stretching), and the skin is breathable for applications. As expected, the e-fabric skin is proven to be robust for detecting a spatial pressure distribution in real time. The extremely simple fabrication process is also an extra plus point in view of point mass production.