Printable flexible tactile pressure and temperature sensors with high selectivity against bending

Flexible electronics are of great interest in a future electric device such as artificial electronic devices. Especially, artificial electronic skin (e-skin) is widely studied by developing a tactile pressure sensor on a flexible substrate. However, conventional flexible tactile sensors also detect the bending of substrate without applying a tactile pressure, and that is the one of bottlenecks to realize stable operation of a flexible device. This study demonstrates the high selectivity of tactile pressure and temperature sensors against bending based on strain engineering. To achieve high selectivity, a cantilever type strain sensor in a flexible substrate is developed. In addition, the temperature sensor is also mechanically stable. It should be worth to note that these sensors are fabricated by a fully printing method using a screen printer. This finding and demonstration eventually allow us to apply the flexible devices on versatile surfaces with accurate sensing.