High-Sensitivity Piezoresistive Biomass-Derived Carbon Aerogel/Polydimethylsiloxane Composite with Extreme Temperature Adaptability

Abstract

As a core technology in flexible electronics systems, piezoresistive sensors exhibit significant application value in frontier fields such as medical health monitoring, intelligent human–machine collaboration, and bionic robot perception. A novel flexible piezoresistive sensing material was developed by combining biomass-derived carbon aerogel (CC) with polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). The composites had excellent fatigue resistance, maintaining more than 90% shape recovery and less than 3.8% residual deformation after 100 000 cycles at 30% strain. Furthermore, combining biomass-derived carbon aerogel with polydimethylsiloxane composites exhibited excellent piezoresistive response characteristics at different temperatures. In the temperature range from −30 °C to 100 °C, its resistance decreased with increasing temperature, while showing a shortened response time. The composite achieved a stable resistance response through the reversible contact of the conductive network under the action of external forces and had a wide linear detection range, high sensitivity, and effective differentiation between static pressure and dynamic deformation signals. This work established the correlation between the microscopic deformation of the carbon skeleton and the macroscopic electrical behavior, and verified the stability and durability of combining biomass-derived carbon aerogel with polydimethylsiloxane composites under complex stress conditions. The collaborative design strategy provides an innovative platform for the development of sustainable, high-performance flexible sensors with important potential applications in health monitoring and intelligent human–machine interfaces.

Keywords

carbon aerogel/PDMS composites / cyclic stability / highly compressible / piezoresistive response

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2025 The Author(s). Energy & Environmental Materials published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf of Zhengzhou University.