All-polymer hair structure with embedded three-dimensional piezoresistive force sensors

초록

This paper presents the design, fabrication, and experimental demonstration of an artificial hair sensor made of polymer materials. Long polymer hair structures embedded with flexible three-dimensional piezoresistive sensors were formed on a flexible substrate in two-dimensional arrays to detect an applied external force. The flexible piezoresistor was implemented using a carbon nanotube-polydimethylsiloxane (CNT-PDMS) composite prepared by the mixing of multi-wall carbon nanotubes with PDMS. A CNT-PDMS composite with high conductivity and a high gauge factor was obtained by increasing the CNT concentration in PDMS. In this study, we used a 13% CNT-PDMS composite for fabricating the sensing element that was embedded in the proposed hair sensor. The hair sensor is 4 mm in height and 700 mu m in diameter. The implemented device shows a linear and sensitive response in the on-axis mode with a sensitivity of 2900 ppm/mu m. (c) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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