Highly Sensitive and Flexible Tactile Sensor Based on the Fabrication of Porous Graphene/Silicone Rubber Composites

This paper presents a novel flexible tactile sensor by the fabrication of porous graphene nanoplate (GNP)/silicone rubber (SR) composites as sensing material. The designed tactile sensor has 3×3 (=9) sensing units, each unit has three layers: upper electrode and cover layer, middle porous composites, and bottom electrode layer. The processes of preparing the sensing material and fabricating the tactile sensor are presented. The porous GNP/SR composite possess an extremely high sensitivities of 8.45 kPa ^-1 at 0~55 kPa and 195.02 kPa ^-1 at 55~80 kPa for pressure sensing, its Young's modulus is low (~85.72 kPa) and can endure large strain over 60%. After fabrication of the tactile sensor, its sensing performances are characterized. Experimental testing results showed that the developed tactile sensor has high sensitivity, good dynamic response performance and repeatability under different applied pressures. Results indicated that the developed tactile sensor has potential and could be used to detect human body motion and health monitoring.