Porous Composite PDMS for a Pressure Sensor with a Wide Linear Range

Due to their superior flexibility and stability, flexible pressure sensors are becoming more and more popular for wearable electronics. It is still quite difficult to find high-performance pressure sensors with large detection ranges and great sensitivity. In this paper, an EC/PDMS porous blend with ultraflexible, multilevel porosity and robustness was successfully prepared using ethyl cellulose (EC)-reinforced porous polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). The porous blends exhibit excellent sensing performance, including an ultrawide linear sensing range (0–251.4 kPa, R2=0.995), high sensitivity (8.94 kPa–1), quick response time, and excellent long-term stability (3500 cycles). It shows good detection capabilities for various deformations in human motion, including compression, deformation, and bending. Furthermore, we assembled the EC/PDMS porous pressure sensor into a portable integrated glove for real-time interaction with mobile devices. Using deep learning algorithms, the glove achieves fast gesture translation and mobile, portable real-time output. It achieves 99.7% accuracy for translating static gestures representing 26 English letters, showcasing its ability to translate daily conversations and complex sentences in real time. Additionally, it can recognize continuous dynamic gestures representing some interesting phrases, demonstrating its great potential as a high-performance wearable pressure sensor for human–computer interaction.