Nanoengineering Ultrathin Flexible Pressure Sensor with Superior Sensitivity and Perfect Conformability

Flexible pressure sensors play an increasingly important role in a wide range of applications such as human health monitoring, soft robotics, and human-machine interfaces. To achieve a high sensitivity, a conventional approach is introducing microstructures to engineer the internal geometry of the sensor. However, this microengineering strategy requires the sensor's thickness to be typically at hundreds to thousands of microns level, impairing the sensor's conformability on surfaces with microscale roughness like human skin. In this manuscript, a nanoengineering strategy is pioneered that paves a path to resolve the conflicts between sensitivity and conformability. A dual-sacrificial-layer method is initiated that facilitates ease of fabrication and precise assembly of two functional nanomembranes to manufacture the thinnest resistive pressure sensor with a total thickness of ≈850 nm that achieves perfectly conformable contact to human skin. For the first time, the superior deformability of the nanothin electrode layer on a carbon nanotube conductive layer is utilized by the authors to achieve a superior sensitivity (92.11 kPa-1 ) and an ultralow detection limit (<0.8 Pa). This work offers a new strategy that is able to overcome a key bottleneck for current pressure sensors, therefore is of potential to inspire the research community for a new wave of breakthroughs.