A New Capacitive Pressure Sensor With a Dual-Layer Microstructured Dielectric

To address the issue that the sensitivity and operating range of traditional single-layer dielectric flexible pressure sensors are difficult to be compatible, we propose a flexible capacitive pressure sensor with a dual-layer dielectric. This dielectric is composed of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) conical microstructures and a polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) electrospun fiber layer. In this study, PDMS conical microstructures were fabricated via photosensitive stamp-assisted masking technology, and the PVDF fiber layer was constructed using the electrospinning process. Meanwhile, the finite element analysis software (COMSOL Multiphysics) was employed to conduct a steady-state analysis of the pressure sensor model. The results show that when the electrospinning injection rate is 0.2 mL·min-1and the operating voltage is 17.5 kV, our sensor achieves a sensitivity of 5.921 kPa-1within the pressure range of 0-14 kPa, exhibiting both high sensitivity and a wide linear range. The proposed sensor demonstrates application potential in the field of wearable health monitoring.