Sensitivity-Photo-Patternable Ionic Pressure Sensor Array with a Wearable Measurement Unit

A flexible pressure sensor array provides more information than a single pressure sensor as electronic skin, and independently definable sensitivities of sensing pixels enable more accurate pressure measurements. However, the reported approaches, either changing the mold for the dielectric layer or tuning the dielectric properties, overcomplicate the manufacturing process for the devices. Here, we present a pressure sensor array with photo-patterned sensitivity, which is realized through the synergistic creation of the photo-defined mechanical properties of the dielectric layer and the interfacial capacitive sensing mechanism. Via this design, the sensitivity of each sensing pixel can be photo-defined over a range of ∼70 times of magnitude. Additionally, we created the first wearable measurement unit for the ionic pressure sensor array. The sensitivity-photo-patternable pressure sensor array and the wearable measurement unit fulfill the open need of mapping the pressure distribution over a broad range of magnitude, such as the plantar pressure.