Gold nanoparticle densely packed micro/nanowire-based pressure sensors for human motion monitoring and physiological signal detection

Abstract

Flexible pressure sensors have gained ever-increasing attention because of their widespread applications in wearable devices. The sensor fabrication technologies reported so far are generally complicated, limiting their industrial applications. It is therefore of great importance to develop a simple method to fabricate high-performance flexible pressure sensors. Herein, we report an approach of assembling gold nanoparticles into strictly aligned and densely stacked micro/nanowires by imprinting for flexible pressure sensors with high performance. By our method, the whole assembly process takes only 1 min. The pressure sensor exhibits a best detection limit as low as 25 Pa. The sensors could be attached to any part of the human body and are so sensitive that even pulses in different regions of the body and the differences between a pregnant woman and a nonpregnant woman could be distinguished.