HIGH PERFORMANCE FLEXIBLE CAPACITIVE PRESSURE SENSOR FOR WEARABLE TECHNOLOGIES

Flexible capacitive pressure sensors have applications in a wide variety of fields, especially soft robotics, bioelectronics, wearable devices and healthcare applications. In this study, a capacitive pressure sensor has been designed and fabricated using silver, nickel, and carbon nanoparticle conductive inks. Pad printing method was used to print nanoparticle inks on a polyamide-based taffeta label fabric. Capacitive pressure sensor underwent testing through three methodologies; these are pressing different fingers on the sensor surface, dropping water on the sensor and applying bending-relaxation process to the pressure sensor to determine sensor performance measuring capacitance variations. The capacitance of the fabricated pressure sensor changed according to the type of finger pressed and the number of water droplets dropped. As the amount of water droplets and the force of the pressed finger increase, the capacitance changes in the printed sensor also increase. On the other hand, there was no significant change in the capacitance values of the sensor after the bending-relaxation application. This shows that the proposed flexible pressure sensor can be used in wearable electronics, human-robot interactions, pressure mapping or detection of finger touch.