Work

Intrinsic‐Decoupled Biomimetic Two‐Dimensional Sensing Enabled by Positive‐Negative Dielectric Heterostructures for Pressure Visualization

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: ABSTRACT Flexible tactile sensors capable of simultaneously emulating the multidirectional perception of human skin and realizing intrinsic force decoupling remain a critical challenge for advanced robotics and intelligent human‐machine interfaces. Inspired by the hierarchical architecture of epidermal cells, we present a two‐dimensional force sensor (TDFS) featuring a biomimetic heterostructure that enables structural separation of normal and tangential force components. Force discrimination is enabled by engineering a negative‐permittivity composite with a gradient‐modulus architecture that mechanically reduces the overlap between deformation fields induced by normal and tangential loading. Additionally, benefiting from this structural design and a differential capacitive scheme, the TDFS exhibits reduced inter‐axis coupling within the calibrated loading range and a high angular resolution of 1.5° ranging from 20 to 30 N. The TDFS device provides monotonic normal and tangential responses over 0–30 N, exhibiting high detection sensitivity. Through optimization of the parameters, a separate normal device fabricated with Ni 0.9 achieves a peak normal sensitivity of −892.933 N − 1 within the 27–30 N loading range. A customized readout circuit was further developed to enable stable signal acquisition from the negative‐capacitance sensing system. The synergistic design facilitates directional force perception and provides a reliable and scalable solution for next‐generation multidimensional electronic skins.

Source: Advanced Functional Materials

DOI: 10.1002/adfm.79319