Recent Advances in Graphene-Based Pressure Sensors: A Review

In recent years, pressure sensors have been widely used as crucial technology components in industrial, healthcare, consumer electronics, and automotive safety applications. With the development of intelligent technologies, there is a growing demand for pressure sensors with higher sensitivity, smaller size, and wider detection range. Graphene and its derivatives, as novel emerging materials in recent years, have received widespread attention from researchers due to their unique mechanical and electrical properties and are considered as promising sensing materials for high-performance pressure sensors. In general, graphene-based pressure sensors can be classified into flexible pressure sensors and gas pressure sensors. In this article, we first introduce the basic properties of graphene and its derivatives and then review the research progress of both graphene-based flexible pressure sensors and graphene-based gas pressure sensors, respectively, focusing on different sensing mechanisms. Finally, the application prospects of graphene-based pressure sensors as well as future challenges are discussed.

I. Introduction

With the development of science and technology, pressure sensors have been more and more commonly used in various fields such as consumer electronics [1], [2], medical and health monitoring [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], wearable technology [3], [8], [9], [10], automotive electronics [1], [11], industrial production [12], and aerospace [13], [14]. At the same time, with the rapid advancement of the Internet of Things (IoT) and intellectual technologies in recent years, there is an increasing demand for pressure sensors with higher sensitivity, wider detection range, shorter response time, and smaller size. It is more and more difficult for traditional pressure sensors to meet the above demand in various emerging application scenarios. Therefore, it is necessary to utilize emerging materials such as graphene and its derivatives as the pressure sensing membranes for next-generation pressure sensors.