Flexible and Wearable PEDOT-Paper Pressure Sensor for Detecting Human Voice

Flexible pressure sensors are gaining considerable attention as wearable devices to be potentially utilized in human-machine interfaces. However, the preparation of pressure sensors through a simple, environmentally friendly, and cost-efficient fabrication process, remains as a challenge. In this study, we developed a flexible and wearable piezoresistive pressure sensor which consists of a polyethylene terephthalate (PET) as a flexible substrate for printing silver interdigitated electrodes and a poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) polystyrene sulfonate (PEDOT:PSS) coated tissue paper as an active material. The PEDOT-Paper pressure sensor showed a sensitivity of 1.7/kPa in the range of 0 to 0.46 kPa, a response time of 240 ms and a recovery time of 306 ms. The potential application of this sensor for human voice detection was also demonstrated by mounting the sensor on the throat of a volunteer and pronouncing the words, “Hello” and “Inha University”. The good repeatability and characteristic curves were achieved for each word, confirming the promising application of the PEDOT-Paper pressure sensor in the field of voice recognition.