Porous Composite PDMS for a Pressure Sensor with a Wide Linear Range

Due to their superior flexibility and stability, flexible
pressure
sensors are becoming more and more popular for wearable electronics.
It is still quite difficult to find high-performance pressure sensors
with large detection ranges and great sensitivity. In this paper,
an EC/PDMS porous blend with ultraflexible, multilevel porosity and
robustness was successfully prepared using ethyl cellulose (EC)-reinforced
porous polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). The porous blends exhibit excellent
sensing performance, including an ultrawide linear sensing range (0–251.4
kPa, R2=0.995), high sensitivity (8.94
kPa–1), quick response time, and excellent long-term
stability (3500 cycles). It shows good detection capabilities for
various deformations in human motion, including compression, deformation,
and bending. Furthermore, we assembled the EC/PDMS porous pressure
sensor into a portable integrated glove for real-time interaction
with mobile devices. Using deep learning algorithms, the glove achieves
fast gesture translation and mobile, portable real-time output. It
achieves 99.7% accuracy for translating static gestures representing
26 English letters, showcasing its ability to translate daily conversations
and complex sentences in real time. Additionally, it can recognize
continuous dynamic gestures representing some interesting phrases,
demonstrating its great potential as a high-performance wearable pressure
sensor for human–computer interaction.