Three-dimensional (3D) porous conductive composites explored in highly sensitive tactile sensors have attracted extensive close attention in recent years owing to their peculiar porous structure and unique physical properties in terms of excellent mechanical flexibility, high relative dielectric permittivity, and good elastic property. Herein, we report an practical, efficient, and macroscopic dip-coating process to manufacture rapid-response, low detection limit, high-sensitivity, and highly sensitive capacitive flexible tactile sensors. The fabrication process, tactile perception mechanism, and sensing performance of the developed devices are comparatively investigated. The homogeneous 3D hybrid network constructed by graphene nanoplatelets/carboxyl-functionalized multiwalled carbon nanotubes/silicone rubber composites anchored on polyurethane sponge skeletons exhibits a significantly improved dielectric property, resulting in a high-performance capacitive flexible tactile sensor with a fast response time (∼45 ms), an extremely low-pressure detection limit of ∼3 Pa, excellent sensitivity (∼0.062 kPa–1), and excellent durability and stability over 2000 cycles. Importantly, the flexible devices can be used as the wearable electronic skin and successfully mounted on human skin or a soft-bodied robot to achieve the capability of physiological stimuli monitoring, micropressure monitoring, soft grabbing, etc. Our rapid-response, low detection limit, and high-sensitivity capacitive flexible tactile sensor with a novel 3D porous dielectric layer could be a prospective candidate for the wearable applications in real-time and high-accuracy portable healthcare monitoring devices, advanced human–machine interfaces, and intelligent robot perception systems.

Flexible, stretchable, and wearable strain sensors have attracted significant attention for their potential applications in human movement detection and recognition. Here, we report a highly stretchable and flexible strain sensor based on a single-walled carbon nanotube (SWCNTs)/carbon black (CB) synergistic conductive network. The fabrication, synergistic conductive mechanism, and characterization of the sandwich-structured strain sensor were investigated. The experimental results show that the device exhibits high stretchability (120%), excellent flexibility, fast response (∼60 ms), temperature independence, and superior stability and reproducibility during ∼1100 stretching/releasing cycles. Furthermore, human activities such as the bending of a finger or elbow and gestures were monitored and recognized based on the strain sensor, indicating that the stretchable strain sensor based on the SWCNTs/CB synergistic conductive network could have promising applications in flexible and wearable devices for human motion monitoring.

Flexible and wearable smart fabrics are becoming increasingly popular in healthcare and motion monitoring because of their potential applications in flexible and stretchable electronics. The integration of ordinary fabric with conductive fillers provides the fabric with new and intriguing functions, such as sensation. In this study, a low-cost and efficient manner was used to fabricate a highly reliable conductive composite on fabric as an effective sensing material for gesture recognition. A strain sensor was fabricated by the incorporation of the highly conductive polyaniline (PANI) polymer, graphene nanoplatelets (GNPs), and a handful of silicon rubber (SR) onto elastic Lycra fabric via a spin-coating method. We demonstrated that the fabric strain sensor was able to detect and monitor the bending angle of a human finger. By means of the covered structure of the PANI and GNPs, the composite fabric could bear a 40% maximum strain and possess the pleasant characteristic of stretching and bending. The gauge factor of the fabric strain sensor reached 67.3; this was an improvement of approximately four times compared to sensors without PANI microparticles. Finally, the superior performance of our strain sensor through the integration of five strain sensors on a glove for the motion detection of fingers was demonstrated.

Recently, flexible pressure sensors (FPSs) have attracted intensive attention owing to their ability to mimic and function as electronic skin. Some sensors are exploited with a biological structure dielectric layer for high sensitivity and detection. However, traditional sensors with bionic structures usually suffer from a limited range for high‐pressure scenes due to their high sensitivity and high hysteresis in the medium pressure range. Here, a reconfigurable flea bionic structure FPS based on 3D printing technology, which can meet the needs of different scenes via tailoring of the dedicated structural parameters, is proposed. FPS exhibits high sensitivity (1.005 kPa−1 in 0–1 kPa), wide detection range (200 kPa), high repeatability (6000 cycles in 10 kPa), low hysteresis (1.3%), fast response time (40 ms), and very low detection limit (0.5 Pa). Aiming at practical application implementation, FPS has been correspondingly placed on a finger, elbow, arm, neck, cheek, and manipulators to detect the actions of various body parts, suggestive of excellent applicability. It is also integrated to make a flexible 3 × 3 sensor array for detecting spatial pressure distribution. The results indicate that FPS exhibits a significant application potential in advanced biological wearable technologies, such as human motion monitoring.

Our demand for ubiquitous and reliable gas detection is spurring the design of intelligent and enabling gas sensors for the next-generation Internet of Things and Artificial Intelligence. The desire to introduce gas sensors everywhere is fueled by opportunities to create room-temperature semiconductor gas sensors with ultralow power consumption. In this Perspective, we provide an overview of the recent achievement of room-temperature gas sensors that have been translated from the advances in the design of the chemical and physical properties of low-dimensional semiconductor nanomaterials. The emergence of solutionprocessable nanomaterials opens up remarkable opportunities to integrate into highperformance and flexible room-temperature gas sensors by using low-temperature, large-area, solution-based methods instead of costly, high-vacuum, high-temperature device manufacturing processes. We review the fundamental factors which affect the receptor and transducer functions of semiconductor gas sensors. We also discuss challenges that must be addressed in the move to the continuous miniaturization and evolution of semiconductor gas sensors.