Flexible, highly sensitive, easy fabricating process, low-cost pressure sensors are the trend for flexible electronic devices. Inspired by the softness, comfortable, environmental friendliness and harmless of natural latex mattress, herein, we report an agile approach of constructing a flexible 3D-architectured conductive network by dip-coating silver nanowires (AgNWs) on the natural rubber latex foam (NRLF) substrate that provide the 3D micro-network structure as the skeleton. The variation of the contact transformed into the electrical signal among the conductive three-dimensional random networks during compressive deformation is the piezoresistive effect of AgNWs/NRLF pressure sensors. The resulting AgNWs/NRLF pressure sensors exhibit desirable electrical conductivity (0.45-0.50 S/m), excellent flexibility (58.57 kPa at 80% strain), good hydrophobicity (~128° at 5th dip-coated times) and outstanding repeatability. The AgNWs/NRLF sensors can be assembled on a glove to detect hand motion sensitively such as bending, touching and holding, show potential application such as artificial skin, human prostheses and health monitoring in multifunctional pressure sensors.
Keywords: hydrophobicity; natural rubber latex foam; piezoresistive; pressure sensor; silver nanowires.