Fabrication of carbon nanotube-coated fabric for highly sensitive pressure sensor

We have developed a highly sensitive pressure sensor using carbon nanotube (CNT)-coated polyester fabric. With simple and cost-effective dip-coating process using CNT ink, we produced conductive polyester fabric, and its resistance could be controlled easily by modulating dipping number. When the pressure is applied, the highly porous structure of the fabric allows the dramatic improvement of the mechanical contacts between fibers, leading to more electrical contacts in the CNT networks. The fabric also showed high mechanical flexibility and robustness against bending, without any significant electrical degradation. We observed a decrease in resistance of the fabricated sensor under external pressure and the maximum sensitivity of the sensor reached ∼10.63%/kPa for pressure up to 10kPa, which is two orders of magnitude higher than that of the existing CNT-polymer composite-based pressure sensors. The proposed sensor could serve as a flexible and cheap pressure sensing solution for wearable electronics or human-machine interface.