Flexible ceramic-polymer nanocomposite piezoelectric pressure sensor

Abstract

The flexible high-content ceramic-polymer nanocomposite films for highly sensitive piezoelectric pressure sensor were fabricated using Pb(Zr _1/2 Ti _1/2 )O ₃ -(Pb(Zn _1/3 Nb _2/3 )O ₃ -Pb(Ni _1/3 Nb _2/3 )O ₃ ) nanoparticles and epoxy resin with the contents of 81 and 19 wt.% respectively. This paper reports that piezoelectric and dielectric properties of the flexible 0-3 ceramic-polymer nanocomposite film can be improved by the small amounts of CNTs dispersed within the film. The fabricated flexible ceramic-epoxy nanocomposite film with 0.07 wt.% CNTs had highest piezoelectric coefficients of 68 pC/N (d ₃₃ ) and 434 mV.m/N(g ₃₃ ), which are respectively 2.5 and 2.2 times higher than those of the preliminary nanocomposite film. Corresponding to the enhanced dielectric and piezoelectric properties of CNTs-doped nanocomposite films, the flexible piezoelectric nanocomposite pressure sensor optimized with 0.07 wt.% CNTs filler content provided the remarkable highest sensitivity of 575.42 mV·kPa ^-1 , which is three times higher than that of the preliminary nanocomposite film ( 186 mV·kPa ^-1 ).