Piezoresistive pressure sensors are becoming increasingly popular for their applications in human motion detection, wearable electronics, health monitoring, and man-machine interfaces. Sensors with superior sensitivity and a broad range of sensing are desirable for practical implementation. To achieve those, a low-cost, scalable and simple fabrication technique of dip coating Ti3C2 (MXene), PEDOT:PSS, and AgNPs onto a melamine foam is proposed. The prepared sensor demonstrated sensitivity of 414.27 kPa-1 at (4.17-12.98 kPa), 182.52 kPa-1 at (12.98-94.55 kPa), 317.78 kPa-1 at (94.55 kPa-1.94 MPa), 164.32 kPa-1 at (> 1.94 MPa), extraordinaire detecting range 977.6 N and outstanding repeatability. The sensor was successfully applied for the real-time detection of heartbeat pulse, limb movement, human weight and powered an LED. Furthermore, an integrated circuit design with sensors had the ability to identify spatial pressure distribution and visualize it on a pressure map.
Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10853-022-08012-y.
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2022, Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.