A 0.6 Meter Long Large-Area Flexible Pressure Sensors with Outstanding Uniformity and Thermostability

To date, although great progress has been made in flexible sensors for their sensitivity and biocompatibility, several grand challenges still remain in terms of the manufacturability, uniformity and thermostability of excessively large area devices. This work presents a mass production method for large-area flexible pressure sensors, consisting of flexible printed circuit (FPC) as electrodes and screen printed PDMS/CNT as the sensing layers, which are bonded together using a rolling machine at high temperatures. We show a fabricated device with a length of 0.6 meter and a width of 0.225 meter, carrying an array of 24 pressure sensing sites. Based on such a fabrication process, our sensor shows a 100% yield rate for all 24 sensing sites, with an outstanding responsive uniformity, thermostability (> 150 ℃) and robustness to thousand times of repetition and mechanical tapping. This sensor provides an excellent solution for pressure monitoring under extreme conditions in industrial process control.