Origami, the ancient paper folding art, has been investigated from paper electronics to medical equipment and even spaceflight for its amazingly rich scientific foundation of building a complex three-dimensional (3D) structure, saving space, transmitting force, and establishing a load-bearing structure. Introducing origami into flexible pressure sensing will bring a new function to the planar electrical component. In this paper, a flexible iontronic sensing mechanism, handwriting process, and origami were combined into a pressure sensing platform, providing a handwriting iontronic pressure sensing origami with high performance, customized design, and 3D sensing ability. The handwriting process provides a simple, low-cost, efficient, no equipment limitation, and customized manufacturing method in preparing the pressure sensing origami using one commercial paper, while an ionic-electrode interface can be easily constructed by folding. Moreover, the device integrates the advantages of origami of forming a 3D structure, force transmission, and structural support with the pressure sensing function. Notably, the handwriting iontronic pressure sensing origami offers a high device sensitivity of 1.0 nF/(kPa cm2), a detection limitation of 5.12 Pa, a rapid mechanical response time of 6 ms and a reset time of 4 ms, and an ultrahigh repeatability under periodic pressure. Benefiting from the unique properties of origami and the remarkable performances, the proposed handwriting iontronic pressure sensing origami can be highly advantageous for the emerging applications such as STEM education, customized electronic design, human-machine interfaces, etc., where high performance, rapid prototype, and 3D sensing are required.
Keywords: handwriting; ionic liquid gel; iontronic; origami; pressure sensor.