A biomimetic setaria viridis interlocking structure for wearable piezoresistive sensor with high sensitivity

Biomimetic Setaria viridis interlocking structures for piezoresistive sensors use low-cost fabric and PPy. • The sensor has 33.45 kPa⁻¹ sensitivity (≤2.3 kPa), 40 kPa detection range and 0.052 g detection limit. • Simple fabrication (surface layer removal + gas-phase polymerization) ensures low cost and scalability. • It enables uses in motion monitoring, sound discrimination, pressure mapping, Morse code transmission. A biomimetic piezoresistive material based on a Setaria viridis-inspired interlocking structure was fabricated from air interlayer fabric and polypyrrole (PPy) for application in flexible pressure sensors featuring high-sensitivity and low-detection-limit. A high-resilience air interlayer fabric was selected for the design. One side of the fabric substrate was removed. The middle support layer creates a high-specific-surface-area fiber layer with a biomimetic Setaria viridis-like structure. Two biomimetic Setaria viridis fabrics are stacked support-layer-to-support-layer. The formed interlocking structure is sandwiched between two copper foil electrodes to build a sandwich architecture. External pressure concentrates stress on the fibers of the support layer. This flexible sensor achieves a wide detection range of 40 kPa and an ultrahigh sensitivity of 33.45 kPa −1 below 2.3 kPa. Piezoresistive sensors based on the biomimetic Setaria viridis interlocking structure have achieved promising applications in human motion monitoring, sound discrimination, spatial pressure distribution, and Morse code-related information transmission. Download: Download high-res image (324KB) Download: Download full-size image