Lightweight and Elastic Silver Nanowire/PEDOT:PSS/Polyimide Aerogels for Piezoresistive Sensors

Abstract

Flexible piezoresistive sensors have been widely used in the fields of wearable electronic devices, electronic skin, intelligent human–computer interaction, health monitoring, life medicine research, intelligent robot, and so on. However, how to find a balance between stability, sensitivity, and sensing range, especially under the low-pressure range, is still an immediate challenge waiting to be solved. Herein, a highly flexible and compressible aerogel with a smooth layer structure was successfully fabricated by combining Ag nanowires into poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):polystyrene sulfonate and polyimide composites by casting and thermal annealing. As a result, the elastic aerogel with large reversible compressibility exhibited a good compression sensitivity of 0.31 kPa–1 in the pressure range of 0–1.25 kPa, high linearity of compression strain and resistance change rate, great fatigue resistance (height retention of 98–99% at 1000% strain/min), and large reversible compressibility (height retention of 90% after 200 compression cycles). The excellent performance of conductive aerogels shows their promising potential in the field of piezoelectric sensing.