Flexible Capacitive Pressure Sensors With Conical-Protrusion Porous Microstructure for Human Health Monitoring

The flexible capacitive pressure sensors exhibit significant potential for applications in wearable health monitoring, soft robotics, and human–computer interaction. However, achieving both high sensitivity and a wide response range simultaneously remains challenging. To address this, we designed a sensor incorporating a conical-protrusion porous microstructure inspired by the porous architecture of sponges. This structure enables a piecewise linear response across three distinct deformation stages: compression of the conical protrusions at low pressures, deformation of the porous framework at intermediate pressures, and bulk material densification at high pressures. This multistage mechanism effectively reconciles the sensitivity-range tradeoff, yielding a sensor with high sensitivity (2.996 kPa-1), a broad operational range (0–500 kPa), fast response time (98 ms), and durability exceeding 8000 cycles under 300-kPa loading. Through demonstrations in human health monitoring and human–machine interaction, we highlight the sensor’s applicability to next-generation intelligent sensing systems. This work introduces a novel structural strategy for high-performance flexible capacitive pressure sensors, offering a pathway to balance sensitivity and dynamic range in flexible capacitive pressure sensors