Design and characterization of flexible pressure sensors for integration in smart medical textiles

This paper is a feasibility study of using conductive fabric as electrode for flexible pressure sensors. A new low-cost textile-based pressure sensor was developed using piezoresistive carbon loaded polyolefin film as the sensing element. The sensor design as well as its manufacturing is described in detail. The performance parameters of the sensor such as hysteresis, accuracy, and sensitivity were investigated experimentally. The sensor exhibited a bilinear pressure-sensitivity curve with a sensitivity values of 0.1 kPa-1 at a lower range of pressure (<10 kPa) and 0.025 kPa-1 in a higher pressure range (>10 kPa). The sensor displayed an average overall accuracy of about 88% and hysteresis of 13% at 5 kPa. The results obtained from the proposed pressure sensor configuration demonstrate that it can be successfully used for the development of flexible textile-based low-pressure sensors for biomedical and other similar applications.