A Fully Printed Flexible Sensor Sheet for Simultaneous Proximity-Pressure-Temperature Detection

Flexible multimodal sensors are an indispensable part of Internet of Things for human-machine interfaces, health monitoring, and soft robots. Despite tremendous research efforts dedicated to high sensitivity, flexibility, and multifunctionality, these merits are conventionally accompanied with sophisticated fabrications that hinder practical applications. Herein, a fully printed flexible trimodal sensor sheet containing 4 x 4 pressure sensor units, 2 x 2 temperature sensor units, and 1 proximity sensor unit is proposed. Its elaborate structure featured by a trifunctional bottom electrode layer effectively extends the functionality of this sensor sheet as well as maintains facile fabrication. The heterogeneous sensor units in this multifunctional device are rationally integrated to suppress crosstalk and mutual interference while keeping a compact configuration. Moreover, the integration of all functionalities enables a dual-level detection capability, where proximity perception at the upper level can detect the event of interest to wake up temperature and pressure perceptions at the lower level. This provides a solution to free densely distributed sensor networks from a long-term operation, thereby saving power consumption. The fully printable multimodal sensor sheet shows potentials for low-cost macroscale flexible electronics.

Automated summary

The fully printed flexible trimodal sensor sheet integrates pressure, temperature, and proximity sensor units, with a sophisticated structure that is easy to fabricate and can suppress crosstalk and mutual interference, providing dual-level detection capability and saving power consumption.