A Highly Flexible Tactile Sensor with Self-Poled Electrospun PVDF Nanofiber

Abstract

This paper reports the fabrication and characterization of a highly flexible tactile sensing device using self-poled electrospun Polyvinylidene difluoride (PVDF) nanofibers. The PVDF fiber forming conditions were optimized to yield bead free uniform nanofibers with high degree of β-phase content. XRD analysis revealed that the electrospun nanofibers exhibited high degree of β-phase that inturn results in high piezoelectric coefficient. The tactile sensor was fabricated on ITO coated PET substrate with a very simple process flow. The fabricated device was tested for its durability and stability in response. The characterization results revealed that the nanofiber based device yielded stable performance with a maximum output voltage of 3.5 V <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">pp</sub> for the highest straining condition.