Sacrificial 3D Printing of Highly Porous, Soft Pressure Sensors

Additive manufacturing (AM) technologies offer the possibilities of rapid prototyping, novel and innovative geometrical freeform 3D designs. Recent progress in AM has proved its potential to facilitate the fabrication of multi-material innovative sensing devices for wearable soft electronics. Extrusion based 3D printing such as fused deposition modeling FDM is gaining popularity in academic research due to availability, affordability, the ability to be modified, simultaneous multi-material fabrication, ease of material adaption, and development. Herein, a method of fabricating soft compressible multi-layered pressure sensors via FDM 3D multi-material printing is presented. Highly sensitive and tunable pressure sensors are realized with enhanced compressibility and wide sensing range. The electromechanical properties of the 3D printed sensors are investigated throughout this paper. The 3D printed pressure sensors demonstrate high tactile sensitivity reaching 0.7145 kPa(-1) at 0.5 kPa. Cyclic testing of the multi-layered sensor shows linear and reproducible response with wide range sensitivity that suggests their great potential in wearable and robotic applications.