Ultrasensitive iontronic pressure sensor based on rose-structured ionogel dielectric layer and compressively porous electrodes

Recently, flexible iontronic pressure sensor composed of an ionogel dielectric layer with various designed bugle structures and two flexible electrodes normally exhibits great advantages in detecting pressure, such as ultrahigh sensitivity and resolution. However, the core component, i.e., the patterned ionogel dielectric layer, was usually fabricated via template transferring from various artificially designed templates by time consuming and sophisticated high-resolution 3D printing or laser etching. Herein, an ionogel dielectric layer with rose bionic pattern was easily fabricated via a two-step transfer printing process from natural rose petals, which could further assemble with two compressible and porous electrodes to form a high-performance iontronic pressure sensor. Owing to the generation of electric double layer and high compressibility of the patterned dielectric layer as well as the soft electrode, the prepared sensor shows a high sensitivity of 480.7 kPa −1 (0–0.5 kPa), rapid response/recovery (10 and 29 ms, respectively), and excellent durability (over 2000 cycles). Because of these outstanding sensing properties, the sensor has versatile applications in detecting human motion, physiological signal, and encrypted transmission of information, which shows great potential in healthcare monitoring devices and wearable electronics.