A Textile-Based Resistive Tactile Sensor with High Sensitivity in a Wide Pressure Range

This paper firstly reports an all-textile tactile sensor with high sensitivity and linear response over a wide pressure range based on carbon nanotube (CNT)-coated fabric with a stacked multilayer structure. When pressure is applied, the hierarchical, porous structure of fabric with a large surface area allows the dramatic increase in the contact area between the stacked fabrics, leading to a decrease in contact resistance. The multilayer structure can improve the linearity and sensitivity owing to the effective stress distribution and the increased contact area change between the layers compared to a single-layered one. We observed a linear increase in current of the fabricated sensor under external pressure, and it exhibited high sensitivity over a broad pressure range. The proposed sensor would be an attractive candidate for flexible, highperformance tactile sensing components.