Developing tunable flexible nanocomposite pressure sensors
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Date
2025-08
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University of New Brunswick
Abstract
Conventional pressure sensors often suffer from limited flexibility, material degradation, and reduced sensitivity over time, leading to shortened operation, performance, and restricted applications. These limitations create a growing demand of flexible and tunable nanocomposite pressure sensors that can maintain high uniformity, durability, and detection resolution. These sensors have wide-ranging application such as robotics, healthcare, and wearable electronics. This research focuses on developing a highly flexible tunable nanocomposite 2-D spatial pressure mapping sensor by formulating a conductive ink using multi-walled carbon nanotubes and integrating it with a monofilament precision fabric as a substrate.
In the first phase, a nanocomposite ink was synthesized and compared to other carbon-based inks in terms of electrical conductivity and uniformity across the sample. Scanning electronic microscopy was employed to analyze the consistency and morphology to optimize ink formulation for a targeted conductivity range. Multi-walled carbon nanotubes demonstrated percolation conductivity at a lower concentration. In the second phase, the optimized ink was coated onto monofilament precision fabric characterized by differing pore size, porosity, and thickness. Conductivity performance was evaluated across several fabrics, revealing fabric characteristics significantly influenced pressure sensor output. Performance testing confirms that each pore is effectively acting as an individual pressure sensing unit and combined with a 2-D electrode array for measuring volumetric conductivity, a network of approximately 8000 sensing units, or sensels, per sample could be fabricated.