Sea urchin-like microstructure pressure sensors with an ultra-broad range and high sensitivity.

Sensitivity and pressure range are two significant parameters of pressure sensors. Existing pressure sensors have difficulty achieving both high sensitivity and a wide pressure range. Therefore, we propose a new pressure sensor with a ternary nanocomposite FeO/C@SnO. The sea urchin-like FeO structure promotes signal transduction and protects FeO needles from mechanical breaking, while the acetylene carbon black improves the conductivity of FeO. Moreover, one part of the SnO nanoparticles adheres to the surfaces of FeO needles and forms FeO/SnO heterostructures, while its other part disperses into the carbon layer to form SnO@C structure. Collectively, the synergistic effects of the three structures (FeO/C, FeO/SnO and SnO@C) improves on the limited pressure response range of a single structure. The experimental results demonstrate that the FeO/C@SnO pressure sensor exhibits high sensitivity (680 kPa), fast response (10 ms), broad range (up to 150 kPa), and good reproducibility (over 3500 cycles under a pressure of 110 kPa), implying that the new pressure sensor has wide application prospects especially in wearable electronic devices and health monitoring.