Editor's Note: In the newly launched "Technology Series" of our newspaper's special column "Guo Yuansheng on Sensors," Guo Yuansheng, Deputy Director of the Science and Technology Committee of the Central Committee of the Jiusan Society and Executive Vice Chairman of the China Sensor and IoT Industry Alliance, will focus on the ten mainstream sensor types: quantum, acoustic, force, optical, gas, magnetic, temperature, humidity, radio frequency (RFID), and biosensors. He will provide a systematic and popularized in-depth analysis from dimensions such as sensitive mechanisms and materials, characteristics and performance indicators, industrial chains and capabilities, technology application status, domestic and international industrial landscapes, and future technology development trends. The aim is to provide industry practitioners, technical managers, investment institutions, and cross-disciplinary researchers with a technical atlas that combines professional depth and quick accessibility, helping readers establish a clear knowledge framework and industrial coordinates during the critical period of rapid iteration and track switching in sensor technology.
We welcome readers to continue following the "Application Series" while paying further attention to the series content of "Guo Yuansheng on Sensors: Technology Series," to understand in more detail the underlying logic of the technical system and interrelationships of sensitive mechanisms and materials, sensitive devices and processes. Starting from the most basic technologies, readers can understand the evolutionary logic and innovative development opportunities of perception technology.
From foldable smartphones that bend freely without touch interruption and flexible ECG patches that safeguard heart health, to service robots gently grasping fruits and vegetables and bionic prosthetics recreating human touch, an increasing number of smart terminals, medical devices, and robotic products are now breaking free from the inherent forms of traditional electronic products, which are "hard, rigid, and fixed." The core underlying technology supporting this transformation in the form and perception upgrade of smart products is flexible sensitive materials. As the core foundational materials in the new generation of flexible electronics, smart healthcare, and bionic robotics industries, flexible sensitive materials break the physical shackles and performance boundaries of traditional rigid sensing materials. They combine extreme flexibility, environmental adaptability, and high-precision perception capabilities, allowing them to conform to curved surfaces, adapt to deformations, and be compatible with the human body. This achieves a leapfrog upgrade of mechanical equipment from "rigid data detection" to "human-like world perception."
Guo Yuansheng, Deputy Director of the Science and Technology Committee of the Central Committee of the Jiusan Society and Executive Vice Chairman of the China Sensor and IoT Industry Alliance
I. Structural Reconstruction: The Underlying Innovation from Hard Rigid Bodies to Flexible Perception
Flexible sensitive materials constitute a complete material system with multiple categories, mechanisms, and scenario adaptability. According to material properties, they can be divided into three core categories: carbon-based, composite-based, and polymer. Different materials possess differentiated structural characteristics, perception mechanisms, performance parameters, and application tracks. They complement and iteratively synergize with each other, jointly building the industrial foundation of modern flexible perception technology.
The core breakthrough of all flexible sensitive materials is essentially a revolution in microstructural reconstruction. In their natural state, functional nanomaterials with conductive and sensing capabilities are mostly hard and extremely brittle, making them impossible to use directly in the preparation of flexible devices, which is the core root cause of the rigidity of traditional sensing materials. Through more than a decade of technical exploration, researchers have developed a mature logic for structural transformation: without changing the excellent electrical, mechanical, and sensitive core properties of the materials themselves, they only reorganize the microstructure, reshape the morphology, integrate functions, optimize interfaces, integrate and adapt parameters, enabling hard functional materials to possess macroscopic flexible characteristics. This ultimately achieves the technical breakthrough of "making hard materials soft, soft materials precise, and precise materials stable," balancing flexible deformation capabilities with precise sensing performance. The current structural transformation logic of mainstream flexible sensitive materials mainly revolves around three major systems: carbon-based materials, layered materials, and polymer materials, forming differentiated flexible forming paths.
Graphene, as a typical hard single-atom carbon-based material, has a hardness far exceeding that of steel, is brittle and hard, and has no deformation capability. Researchers innovatively adopted a wet transfer process to peel off single-layer graphene from a hard copper foil substrate and precisely transfer and attach it to a lightweight and soft polyimide flexible film substrate, ultimately forming a unique fish-scale-like micro-flake overlapping structure. This microstructure has extremely strong adaptive deformation capabilities. When the material is bent, folded, or twisted, adjacent graphene micro-flakes can slightly slide, misalign, and fit together without breaking, falling off, or causing conductive open circuits. Macroscopically, it can be bent and curled at will, while fully retaining graphene's core advantages of ultra-high conductivity, ultra-fast response, and high transparency, making it a core material for high-precision flexible touch and micro-pressure monitoring.
Carbon nanotubes are rigid tubular nanomaterials. A single carbon nanotube is hard, straight, and cannot be deformed, but it possesses excellent electrical conductivity and mechanical properties. Based on this characteristic, researchers used electrospinning and layer-by-layer self-assembly processes to weave and stack massive ultra-fine carbon nanotubes in a disordered manner, constructing a loose, porous, three-dimensional network overlapping structure with three-dimensional interconnection. There are a large number of deformable voids inside this network structure. When the material is subjected to stretching, compression, or bending, the carbon nanotubes can freely slide, rotate, and reorganize the network morphology to release deformation stress, effectively avoiding structural damage. After the external force disappears, the network structure can autonomously rebound and reset, with extremely strong stability, perfectly achieving the performance characteristic of "combining rigidity and flexibility," and adapting to complex working conditions with high-frequency deformation and repeated bending.
MXene, as a new type of layered hard ceramic material, is densely stacked, hard, and completely lacking in toughness in its native state, with excellent electrical and thermal conductivity. Through liquid-phase exfoliation, nanosheet dispersion, and flexible stacking and forming processes, dense bulk MXene can be exfoliated into ultra-thin two-dimensional nanosheets, which are then re-stacked and composited in a disordered manner to form a flexible layered structure. The modified MXene material not only retains the advantages of native ultra-high conductivity, high thermal conductivity, and high sensitivity but also possesses the characteristics of being lightweight, soft, bendable, and conformable to curved surfaces. Its sensing accuracy is significantly improved compared to traditional carbon-based materials, making it a core preparation material for high-end multimodal electronic skin and ultra-high-precision pressure sensor arrays.
The flexible transformation logic of polymer materials is completely different from that of nano-carbon materials, with the core being the reshaping of the molecular chain structure. Polymer raw materials represented by PVDF (polyvinylidene fluoride) are hard plastic particles in their native state, with disordered and chaotic molecular chain arrangements and no sensing functions. Through a high-temperature melting and stretching process, the chaotic molecular chains can be stretched, straightened, and directionally arranged. Combined with high-voltage polarization treatment, the internal electric dipole moments of the molecules are regularly arranged, ultimately transforming the hard plastic particles into a lightweight, soft, freely deformable flexible film with piezoelectric sensing functions. Hydrogel materials, on the other hand, are scientifically proportioned with polymer powder, pure water, and crosslinking agents, combined with UV curing processes, to construct a three-dimensional network sponge structure that can lock in water. It is soft, highly stretchable, skin-friendly, and non-toxic, perfectly adapting to human body conforming scenarios.
II. Core Processes and Perception Mechanisms: The Technical Core of Flexible Sensing
The industrialization and multi-scenario application of flexible sensitive materials are inseparable from mature preparation processes and stable, controllable perception mechanisms. Structural reconstruction of materials solves the problem of "becoming soft," while core processing technologies and perception mechanisms solve the core problems of "being usable, easy to use, precisely used, and used for the long term," which is the technical foundation for flexible devices to achieve standardized, large-scale, and high-precision operation.
1. Three Core Processing Technologies: Building the Foundation for the Industrialization of Flexible Devices
The combination of hard functional materials and flexible substrates has always been a technical difficulty in the industry, prone to issues such as delamination, peeling, cracking, and performance degradation. After years of technological iteration, three core processes—wet transfer, electrospinning, and interface modification—have matured, becoming the core support for the standardized preparation of flexible sensitive devices, effectively solving the industrial pain points of poor material adhesion, low yield, and poor stability.
Wet transfer technology is the basic core process for carbon-based flexible devices, mainly used for the lossless transfer printing of ultra-thin nanomaterials such as graphene and carbon nanotubes. Traditional dry transfer easily causes damage, wrinkling, and breakage of nanomaterials, resulting in an extremely low yield. Wet transfer relies on the surface tension of liquids to smoothly, evenly, and completely peel off nanomaterials from hard growth substrates and losslessly attach them to the surfaces of flexible substrates such as polyimide and PU, maximizing the retention of the material's electrical and sensing properties. It can stably prepare large-area, crack-free, highly uniform flexible films, making it an essential process for foldable screen touch layers and large-area sensor arrays. In 2025, domestic and international processes continue to be optimized, and the yield of large-area preparation using this technology has steadily improved, providing core support for large-scale mass production.
Electrospinning technology focuses on improving material flexibility and sensing sensitivity. It uses a high-voltage electric field to stretch polymer solutions and composite solutions into ultra-fine nanofibers, which are stacked layer by layer to form a porous network flexible film. The materials prepared by this process have high porosity, excellent elasticity, and outstanding stretching performance, with a rich internal sensing network. This can greatly enhance the device's ability to perceive micro-pressure and subtle deformations, and is widely used in the preparation of high-sensitivity flexible sensors, motion monitoring devices, and bionic electronic skins, perfectly adapting to dynamic, micro, and high-frequency perception scenarios.
Interface modification technology is a key process to improve the service life and stability of devices. Flexible devices are composed of multiple layers of different materials. After long-term repeated bending and stretching, interlayer delamination, peeling, and failure are extremely likely to occur. Through modification methods such as plasma treatment, chemical modification, and interface adhesion optimization, the bonding force between the hard functional layer and the flexible substrate, as well as between various composite layers, can be significantly enhanced. This effectively solves the industry problem of delamination and performance degradation during long-term use, greatly improving the bending service life and fatigue stability of the device, and providing stability guarantees for the commercial popularization of products.
2. Three Mainstream Perception Mechanisms: Covering Full-Scenario Perception Needs
The working principle of flexible sensitive devices is easy to understand. The core is to accurately convert external physical signals such as external force deformation, temperature, and humidity into readable and analyzable electrical signals. According to the differences in material systems and application scenarios, three mature perception mechanisms have been formed: piezoresistive, piezoelectric, and capacitive. Each performs its own duties and covers the full-scenario needs from conventional monitoring to ultra-high-precision perception.
The piezoresistive effect is the most widely used and industrially mature perception mechanism, mainly adapted to carbon-based and composite-based flexible materials. Its core logic is simple and intuitive: a dense conductive network is built inside the flexible material. When the device is subjected to external forces such as pressing, stretching, or squeezing, the internal conductive pathways will undergo subtle deformation, breakage, and reorganization, directly causing regular changes in resistance values. The greater the external force and the more obvious the deformation, the larger the resistance fluctuation amplitude. The device accurately captures the resistance change data through chips, and after algorithm conversion, it can accurately obtain core information such as pressure magnitude, deformation degree, and force position. This mechanism has a simple structure, controllable cost, stable signals, and convenient reading, and is widely used in conventional high-precision scenarios such as foldable screen touch, pressure array monitoring, and robot tactile perception.
The piezoelectric effect is the exclusive core mechanism of polymer flexible materials, with PVDF materials as the core representative. After high-voltage polarization treatment, the internal electric dipole moments of the flexible polymer film form a stable directional arrangement. It can achieve passive sensing without external power supply or additional energy consumption. When the material is subjected to dynamic external forces such as vibration, pressing, or stretching, the internal molecular structure undergoes slight displacement, breaking the balance of electric dipole moments, and the material surface will autonomously generate weak induced charges. The intensity of the external force is positively correlated with the intensity of the charge signal. With the advantages of ultra-fast response speed, passive operation, and precise dynamic perception, this mechanism is particularly suitable for scenarios such as human dynamic motion monitoring, subtle vibration capture, and ECG signal acquisition, and is the core working principle of flexible ECG patches, motion sensors, and smart bandages.
The capacitive effect focuses on ultra-high precision and ultra-weak perception, adapting to various high-end refined monitoring scenarios. The device adopts a classic "electrode-flexible dielectric-electrode" sandwich structure, with the middle layer being a flexible insulating dielectric and the upper and lower layers being flexible conductive electrodes. When the device surface is subjected to extremely slight pressure or touch, the thickness and density of the middle flexible dielectric will undergo minor changes, directly causing regular fluctuations in the device's capacitance value. By capturing capacitance changes with high-precision chips, it can identify ultra-micro pressures as low as 0.1Pa, capturing subtle deformations and slight touches that are difficult for human skin to perceive. Its sensing accuracy far exceeds that of human skin, making it the core technology for high-end bionic electronic skin, precision tactile sensing, and weak physiological signal monitoring.
III. Three Major Material Systems: Comprehensive Analysis of Categories, Characteristics, Performance, and Adapted Scenarios
After more than a decade of iterative development, flexible sensitive materials have formed three mature systems: carbon-based, polymer, and composite-based, constituting the core material foundation of the current flexible electronics industry. There is no superiority or inferiority among the three types of materials; rather, they complement each other in performance, segment in scenarios, and develop synergistically. Each has unique structural characteristics, performance parameters, technical shortcomings, and precise tracks, jointly covering all application scenarios in consumer electronics, healthcare, smart robots, and industrial automation. Understanding the differentiated characteristics of the three types of materials is the core key to understanding the industrial landscape and future trends of flexible perception.
1. Carbon-Based Flexible Materials: The Industrial-Grade Perception Cornerstone for High-Frequency, High-Precision, and High-Stability
Carbon-based flexible materials mainly include three core categories: graphene, carbon nanotubes, and MXene, and are the earliest flexible sensitive material system to achieve industrialization. The common characteristics of these materials are excellent electrical conductivity, ultra-fast response speed, precise high-frequency perception, and strong bending stability. They focus on industrial-grade and consumer electronics-grade scenarios requiring high precision, high frequency, and high stability. The core shortcomings are limited stretching performance, moderate biocompatibility, and relatively high costs for large-area mass production.
From the perspective of core performance parameters, carbon-based flexible devices have stable and reliable comprehensive performance, with a standard response time of ≤8ms, which can adapt to high-frequency dynamic perception scenarios. After 100,000 repeated bending fatigue tests, the performance retention rate can reach over 92%, with no obvious failures during long-term use. Among them, graphene materials have good light transmittance, uniform touch, and sensitive response, making them the core touch materials for flexible display devices such as foldable screens and rollable screens. They can achieve 100,000 bends without touch interruption, with a touch accuracy of up to 99.9%, perfectly solving the pain points of traditional rigid ITO touch layers being prone to breakage and touch failure at creases. Carbon nanotube materials have a stable network structure, strong fatigue resistance, and high pressure resolution, making them suitable for making large-area pressure sensor arrays. They can accurately capture subtle changes in pressure distribution and are widely used in smart mattresses, plantar pressure monitoring, and industrial precision pressure detection scenarios. MXene materials have better electrical conductivity and sensing sensitivity than graphene and carbon nanotubes, higher high-frequency perception accuracy, stronger environmental adaptability, and lower performance degradation in humid environments, making them the preferred materials for high-end electronic skin and precision tactile sensing.
From the perspective of the current status of technological iteration, in 2025, the optimized graphene preparation process by MIT increased the yield of large-area preparation to 82%, while the domestic process yield reached 75%, continuously narrowing the international gap. The current core shortcomings of carbon-based materials are concentrated in limited stretching performance (maximum stretching rate is only 100%), high costs for large-area mass production, and average long-term stability in extremely humid environments. The future iteration directions mainly include improving stretching performance, reducing mass production costs, optimizing environmental stability, and expanding perception capabilities under multi-dimensional sensitive mechanisms such as temperature, gas, and optics, breaking through the limitations of single perception.
2. Polymer Flexible Materials: The Core Materials for Healthcare and People's Livelihood with High Stretchability and High Skin-Friendliness
Polymer flexible materials, represented by PVDF piezoelectric films and hydrogels, are the most adaptable flexible material system for civil and medical scenarios. Their core characteristics are extreme flexibility, safety and skin-friendliness, strong stretchability, low cost, and excellent biocompatibility. They focus on human body adaptation, non-invasive monitoring, and flexible deformation scenarios, making up for the shortcomings of carbon-based materials in stretchability and skin-friendliness, and are the core foundation of flexible devices in the big health field.
PVDF flexible materials are iterated from hard plastics. After high-temperature stretching and high-voltage polarization treatment, they become functional flexible films that can be bent, twisted, and deformed at will, with a maximum stretching rate of up to 800% and extremely strong deformation adaptability. Its core advantages are stable piezoelectric performance, passive operation, precise signal acquisition, and comfortable and safe long-term wear. Under normal environmental conditions, the annual performance degradation can be controlled within 5%-8%. Stanford University's optimized process in 2024 further reduced the annual degradation to less than 4%, with no signal drift or data disorder during long-term continuous use. This material is non-toxic and harmless, and non-irritating when in close contact with the skin, making it very suitable for making medical wearable devices such as ECG patches, EMG sensors, and smart bandages. It can continuously and stably collect human physiological signals for more than seven days, achieving non-invasive, unnoticeable, and long-term health monitoring.
Hydrogel materials are the category with the best biological adaptability among flexible materials. Synthesized from pure water, polymer materials, and crosslinking agents, their texture is similar to human soft tissue. They are soft, elastic, washable, and repeatedly stretchable, with a maximum stretching rate also reaching 800% and no skin irritation. They can closely fit high-frequency active joints such as wrists, knees, and ankles, accurately capturing human motion posture, joint angles, and muscle contraction states, and are widely used in scenarios such as motion monitoring, postoperative rehabilitation training, and human posture correction. In 2026, a breakthrough was achieved in new spray-on hydrogel technology, which can be directly sprayed on the surface of human skin to form an ultra-thin sensing layer, further improving the unnoticeable wearing experience and signal acquisition accuracy.
The core shortcomings of polymer materials are poor high-temperature resistance, easy deformation and aging at high temperatures, low mechanical strength, and insufficient long-term fatigue resistance. They cannot adapt to high-temperature and high-intensity industrial scenarios, mainly focusing on the civil and healthcare tracks. The future iteration focus is on improving high-temperature resistance, anti-aging properties, and long-term service life, and expanding into high-end scenarios such as implantable medical monitoring.
3. Composite-Based Flexible Materials: The Future Core Track with All-Around Performance and Broad-Spectrum Scenarios
Composite-based flexible materials are a new type of material system that organically combines carbon-based conductive materials, polymer flexible substrates, and functional additives. It is also the core track with the fastest technological iteration and the greatest development potential in the current industry. Its core innovation is to draw on others' strengths to offset weaknesses and complement performance, perfectly integrating the advantages of carbon-based materials (high conductivity, high sensitivity, high stability) and the characteristics of polymer materials (high stretchability, high skin-friendliness, high flexibility), while achieving multimodal perception capabilities. It can simultaneously monitor multi-dimensional signals such as pressure, temperature, humidity, and deformation, and is the core material for electronic skin, robot touch, and high-end human-computer interaction devices.
The current mainstream industrialized silver nanowire/PU composites, graphene/polymer composites, and MXene/carbon nanotube composites have comprehensively better overall performance than single materials, with signal conversion efficiency improved by more than 30% compared to single materials, and significantly optimized bending stability, perception accuracy, and scenario adaptability. The composite material technology published in "Science" in 2025 successfully greatly reduced the probability of delamination after 50,000 bends, effectively solving the industry pain points of weak interlayer bonding force and easy delamination of composite materials. It can accurately identify ultra-micro pressures of 1Pa and subtle temperature differences of 0.1℃, with perception accuracy comprehensively approaching that of human skin.
The core advantage of composite materials is that they have no obvious performance shortcomings, broad-spectrum scenario adaptability, and comprehensive perception functions, which can take into account multiple scenarios such as high-intensity industrial operations, non-invasive medical monitoring, and smart human-computer interaction. The only shortcoming at present is the complex preparation process, high mass production cost, and the need to improve large-scale yield, which limits large-scale civil popularization. In the future, with process simplification, cost optimization, and the empowerment of AI signal decoupling technology, composite materials will gradually replace some single materials and become the mainstream core materials of the flexible perception industry. At the same time, they will also expand their ability to perceive biological and chemical signals, achieving true skin-like full-dimensional perception.
4. Summary of Performance Comparison of Three Types of Flexible Sensitive Components
IV. Full-Scenario Application Implementation: Industrial Empowerment from Consumer Electronics to High-End Intelligent Manufacturing
After more than a decade of technological iteration and industrial implementation, flexible sensitive materials have stepped out of the laboratory, achieving comprehensive penetration in the four core fields of consumer electronics, healthcare, smart robots, and industrial automation. From mass daily smart products to high-end medical monitoring equipment and smart service robots, they empower industrial upgrading and life intelligence in an all-round way, achieving a complete industrial closed loop of "technology implementation, product formation, and market volume expansion."
1. Consumer Electronics Field: Reshaping the Form of Smart Terminals and Achieving Flexible, Unnoticeable Interaction
Consumer electronics is the track where flexible sensitive materials first achieved large-scale commercialization, completely breaking the rigid form shackles of traditional smart devices and ushering in a new era of flexible terminals and unnoticeable interaction. Traditional mobile phones, tablets, and wearable devices use rigid touch sensing layers, which cannot be bent, have poor deformation capabilities, and are easily damaged after repeated use. The popularization of flexible sensitive materials has turned foldable screens, rollable screens, and flexible wearable devices from concepts into mass-produced hit products.
In the field of foldable smart terminals, the graphene flexible touch layer is a core core accessory. With the advantages of being lightweight, transparent, bend-resistant, fast-responding, and uniformly touching, it perfectly adapts to the hundreds of opening and closing uses of mobile phones every day. After 100,000 bends, it still maintains sensitive touch without interruption or failure, completely solving the industry pain point of touch failure at the creases of foldable screens. In 2025, foldable products from mainstream manufacturers such as Samsung and Huawei all adopt optimized carbon-based flexible touch technology, greatly improving terminal usage stability and service life. In the field of wearable devices, flexible sensing materials empower smart bracelets, smart clothing, and smart glasses, achieving lightweight fit and unnoticeable wearing, and accurately monitoring heart rate, blood oxygen, exercise steps, and sleep status around the clock, getting rid of the problems of traditional wearable devices being bulky, restrictive, and inaccurate in monitoring. At the same time, flexible earphones and flexible touch devices rely on pressure sensing technology to achieve keyless touch operation, completing function switching with a light touch, greatly optimizing the human-computer interaction experience. In the future, as technology matures, fully flexible smart terminals that are rollable, wearable, and implantable will continue to popularize, completely rewriting the industrial form pattern of consumer electronics.
2. Healthcare Field: Creating the Sixth Sensory Organ of the Human Body and Ushering in a New Era of Non-Invasive Monitoring
Healthcare is the track with the highest value and greatest implementation potential for flexible sensitive materials. It core-solves the pain points of traditional medical monitoring such as "bulky equipment, invasive discomfort, intermittent data, and inability to monitor for the long term," creating a dedicated "sixth sensory organ" for the human body and realizing a new model of normalized, non-invasive, precise, and home-based health monitoring.
Flexible ECG patches and EMG sensing patches are currently the most mature medical application products. They are lightweight, soft, weigh less than 1 gram, and can closely fit the skin of the human chest and limbs. They are not affected by movement, sitting posture, or sleeping posture, and can continuously and stably collect physiological signals such as ECG, EMG, and respiration for seven days. The data accuracy far exceeds that of traditional home monitoring equipment. The wireless flexible ECG patch developed by Stanford's Bao team in 2024 is equipped with a smart early warning algorithm, which can accurately identify abnormal heart rates and ECG fluctuations, with a clinical test accuracy of 98.5%. It provides a long-term home monitoring solution for patients with arrhythmia and chronic heart diseases, effectively making up for the monitoring blind spots of short-term hospital physical examinations.
In the field of rehabilitation and auxiliary medical care, flexible hydrogel sensors can fit joint parts to accurately capture the motion posture and joint activity angle of postoperative patients, assisting doctors in evaluating rehabilitation progress and guiding rehabilitation training. Flexible electronic skin covering the surface of bionic prosthetics can help people with limb disabilities perceive external pressure, temperature, and texture, restoring basic tactile functions and greatly improving their ability to live independently. In the field of wound care, smart flexible bandages can monitor wound temperature, humidity, pressure, and infection signals in real time, providing early warnings of inflammation and infection risks, and providing precise data support for wound healing. In the field of nerve monitoring, flexible nerve patches can non-invasively capture brain and peripheral nerve signals, aiding in the diagnosis and rehabilitation treatment of neurological diseases. Industry data shows that by 2035, the global flexible medical sensing market size will exceed 300 billion US dollars, with the Chinese market accounting for over 40%. There is huge room for domestic substitution and technological innovation.
3. Soft Robotics Field: Endowing Machines with Touch and Building a New Ecosystem for Human-Machine Collaboration
Traditional industrial robots rely on fixed programs for operations, lacking tactile perception and environmental adaptability. Their grasping force is rigid, and they cannot identify object properties, easily damaging fragile and soft objects. They can only perform repetitive rigid operations and cannot adapt to complex scenarios such as service, nursing, and fine operations. The implementation of flexible sensitive materials and electronic skin technology has completely changed the operating mode of robots, giving cold industrial machines delicate touch and environmental perception capabilities comparable to humans.
Robot fingers equipped with composite flexible tactile sensors can accurately perceive grasping force, object hardness, surface texture, and environmental temperature, and automatically adjust the clamping force in real time. They can gently and stably grasp fragile and soft objects such as eggs, strawberries, and glassware, and can also precisely operate precision industrial parts, achieving refined and flexible operations. In industrial scenarios, flexible perception robots can perform tasks such as precision assembly, sorting of fragile materials, and processing of flexible workpieces that traditional robots cannot achieve. In civil scenarios, home service robots can safely support the elderly, gently organize items, and smoothly transport objects, achieving safe and friendly human-machine interaction. In medical scenarios, nursing robots and surgical assistant robots rely on flexible perception technology to achieve gentle and precise operations, avoiding surgical damage and ensuring nursing safety.
In the future, after humanoid robots are covered with flexible electronic skin all over their bodies, they will possess all-round environmental perception, collision avoidance, and flexible interaction capabilities, completely getting rid of their industrial tool attributes and transforming into intelligent service partners. It is estimated that by 2030, the global soft robot market size will exceed 20 billion US dollars, and by 2035, the penetration rate of electronic skin in humanoid robots will reach 80%. Flexible perception technology will become the core rigid demand for the industrial implementation of humanoid robots.
4. Industrial and Special Fields: Empowering Intelligent Manufacturing and Expanding Applications in Extreme Scenarios
In the field of industrial automation, flexible pressure sensor arrays can fit the surfaces of special-shaped workpieces and flexible production lines, monitoring production pressure and deformation status in real time, precisely controlling production process parameters, and improving the yield of precision manufacturing. Flexible deformation sensors can monitor equipment vibration and component deformation, providing early warnings of equipment failures, and realizing industrial equipment condition monitoring and intelligent operation and maintenance. In the fields of aerospace and special equipment, flexible sensitive materials can fit the curved surfaces of aircraft and special equipment. Under the premise of lightweight and without affecting the equipment structure, they can realize all-round environmental perception, deformation monitoring, and pressure detection, adapting to extremely complex working environments and providing core support for the intelligent upgrading of high-end equipment.
V. Existing Bottlenecks in Industrialization: Technical Pain Points and Industry Development Challenges
Although flexible sensitive materials have achieved multi-scenario commercial implementation and the industry has entered a rapid upward cycle, there are still multiple technical bottlenecks and industrialization difficulties from "initial commercialization" to "large-scale universal popularization and comprehensive high-end implementation." These are also the most core challenges and technical research priorities in the current industry, mainly concentrated in four dimensions: performance balance, long-term stability, mass production cost, and multi-signal decoupling.
First is the core contradiction that flexibility and high-precision performance are difficult to balance. This is a fundamental problem that has plagued the industry for many years. There is a natural trade-off relationship between the flexible stretching performance of materials and their perception accuracy and stability. The stronger the material flexibility, the higher the stretching rate, and the freer the deformation, the more prone it is to problems such as conductive network fluctuation, signal drift, and sensitivity attenuation. Conversely, pursuing ultra-high perception accuracy and stability requires solidifying the structure and increasing rigidity, sacrificing flexibility and deformation capabilities. Most products on the market currently cannot achieve both extreme softness and extreme precision, which greatly limits the deep implementation of high-end scenarios.
Second is the insufficient long-term usage stability and weather resistance. The current average service life of mainstream flexible devices is only 1-2 years. After long-term repeated bending, stretching, and deformation, problems such as interlayer delamination, interface peeling, structural damage, and performance degradation are prone to occur. At the same time, the material's resistance to high and low temperatures, moisture, and aging is limited. In complex and extreme environments such as high temperature, high humidity, and low temperature, the perception accuracy drops significantly and the failure rate accelerates, which cannot meet the long-term usage needs of industrial equipment, high-end equipment, and long-term implantable medical devices. The anti-aging shortcomings of polymer materials, the interlayer bonding shortcomings of composite materials, and the environmental stability shortcomings of carbon-based materials are still key issues that the industry urgently needs to break through.
Third is the high cost of large-scale mass production and insufficient yield. The precision preparation of graphene, micro-nano structure processing, and high-precision composite processes rely on high-end equipment, which requires large equipment investment and complex production processes, resulting in high raw material and manufacturing costs. At the same time, the mass production yield of large-area, multi-layer composite devices needs to be improved. The mass production yield of carbon-based materials is about 75%, and that of composite materials is only about 70%. The insufficient yield further increases the prices of terminal products, making high-end flexible sensing products expensive and difficult to penetrate into the mass consumer market, limiting the large-scale popularization of the industry.
Fourth is multi-signal coupling interference and high decoupling difficulty. Multimodal composite materials can simultaneously perceive multi-dimensional signals such as pressure, temperature, and humidity, but different signals are extremely prone to coupling interference. The fluctuation of a single signal will affect the overall data accuracy, causing problems such as data mixing and inaccurate identification. Currently, low-end products still cannot achieve precise signal separation and rely on high-end AI algorithms for auxiliary decoupling. The high cost and threshold of algorithm adaptation restrict the low-cost popularization of multimodal electronic skin.
VI. Iteration Trends in the Next Decade: Material Expansion, Performance Leap, Perception Revolution, and Industrial Explosion
Based on the technological development cycle from 2026 to 2035, with the cross-disciplinary integration and breakthroughs of materials science, micro-nano processing, artificial intelligence (AI), and bioengineering, flexible sensitive materials will usher in comprehensive changes such as multi-dimensional technological iteration, material system expansion, comprehensive performance leap, perception dimension upgrade, and industrial landscape reshaping. They will upgrade from a single industrial material to a cross-disciplinary, multi-category, and highly intelligent core strategic material, giving birth to multiple brand-new technology tracks and industrial opportunities.
1. Material System Iteration and Expansion: Living Biological Materials Make Their Debut, Completing the Industrial Spectrum
In the next decade, the flexible sensitive material system will no longer be limited to artificially synthesized carbon-based, polymer, and composite materials. Living biological flexible materials will become a brand-new core member of the industry, completing the ultimate expansion of the material system. This material will deeply integrate living biological units such as cardiomyocytes, nerve cells, and skin cells with hydrogels and flexible substrates, creating a new type of bio-electronic integrated sensing material. It combines biological activity, human body adaptability, and electronic sensing capabilities, making it the most disruptive and attractive future track in the field of flexible materials.
Living flexible materials can symbiotically adapt and synchronize rhythms with human tissues, directly capturing micro-physiological information such as nerve signals, myocardial contraction, and cell micro-deformation. The perception accuracy reaches the cellular level, and the biocompatibility reaches the medical level for long-term implantation in the human body. The service life exceeds 10 years, completely solving the shortcomings of traditional materials that cannot be implanted and have poor long-term adaptability. Currently, MIT, in collaboration with Harvard Medical School, has launched a special project on bio-flexible materials for research, planning to complete human implantation tests of living sensing patches by 2030 and achieve commercial implementation by 2035. At that time, flexible perception technology will officially enter a new stage of human implantation and life micro-monitoring.
2. Comprehensive Performance Leap: Completely Breaking the Opposing Bottleneck of Flexibility and Performance
The core bottleneck of "flexible but not precise, precise but not flexible" that has long existed in the industry will be completely broken, and the performance of the three major material systems will achieve a qualitative leap, fully adapting to high-end industrialization needs. The stretching rate of carbon-based materials will increase from 100% to 500%, the conductivity attenuation in humid environments will be controlled within 5%, the mass production yield will increase to 95%, and production costs will drop by 60%. High-frequency perception accuracy will be greatly optimized, balancing flexibility, precision, and stability. The high-temperature resistance limit of polymer materials will increase from 80℃ to 120℃, the annual performance degradation will drop to less than 2%, the service life will be extended from 5 years to 10 years, and anti-aging and weather resistance will be greatly improved to adapt to more complex scenarios. The mass production cost of composite-based materials will drop by 50%, the probability of delamination after 100,000 bends will be controlled within 5%, multimodal perception accuracy will increase by 50%, and terminal product prices will drop by 70%, completely possessing the conditions for large-scale universal popularization.
3. Perception Capability Upgrade: From Mechanical Detection to Skin-Like Full-Dimensional Intelligent Perception
In the future, flexible perception will completely get rid of the limitations of single mechanical detection and upgrade to full-dimensional intelligent perception comparable to or even surpassing human skin. Devices can accurately identify ultra-micro pressures of 1Pa, subtle temperature differences of 0.1℃, humidity fluctuations of 3%, and texture details of 0.1mm. The vibration perception frequency can reach 1000Hz, and they will also have self-healing, self-adaptive, and environmental self-regulating capabilities. Through the triple support of multi-material composite structures, bionic micro-nano texture design, and AI intelligent decoupling algorithms, simultaneous acquisition, precise separation, and intelligent analysis of pressure, temperature, humidity, vibration, biological signals, and chemical signals can be realized, completely solving the problem of signal coupling interference. In the future, electronic skin will not only "perceive data" but also "identify scenarios, judge states, and autonomously adapt," truly realizing intelligent perception upgrades and approaching the delicacy and intelligence level of human touch.
4. Industrial Landscape Transformation: Explosive Growth in Multiple Fields, Reshaping the Technology Ecosystem
From 2026 to 2035 will be the golden explosion period for the flexible sensitive materials industry, with technological maturity, product penetration rate, and market size leaping simultaneously. In the healthcare field, products such as non-invasive long-term monitoring, implantable perception, prosthetic tactile repair, and smart wound care will be comprehensively popularized, building a home smart health monitoring system and reshaping the traditional medical monitoring model. In the field of smart terminals, flexible foldable, rollable, and wearable terminals will become the mainstream of consumer electronics, and unnoticeable flexible interaction will become the industry standard. By 2035, the global flexible electronics market size will exceed 300 billion US dollars. In the field of robotics, flexible tactile perception and full-body electronic skin will be fully implemented, and human-machine safe collaboration and bionic intelligent interaction will become the norm. Service robots and humanoid robots will accelerate their entry into civil and industrial scenarios. In the industrial and special fields, flexible intelligent perception will comprehensively empower intelligent manufacturing, high-end equipment, and aerospace, becoming the core underlying support for high-end intelligent manufacturing.
Conclusion
The decade-long iteration of flexible sensitive materials has never been a simple "transition of sensors from hard to soft," but a full-dimensional systematic technological revolution running through the material bottom layer, perception mechanisms, device processes, and industrial applications. It has completely broken the physical boundaries and performance shackles of traditional rigid perception devices. Relying on unique micro-flexible reconstruction logic, mature multi-mechanism perception technology, and a complete material system layout, it has achieved an all-round innovation in the form, user experience, and application scenarios of perception devices, successfully building a complete industrial closed loop of "materials-devices-terminals-scenarios."
Over the past decade, the flexible sensitive materials industry has completed a leapfrog upgrade. From the first-generation carbon-based films with single functions, weak stability, and high costs, it has gradually developed into a mature technological system with multi-material synergy and complementarity of carbon-based, polymer, and composite-based materials, multimodal perception, high stability, and high adaptability. It has realized the qualitative change from mechanical data detection to human-like intelligent perception, and from laboratory principle exploration to hundred-billion-level industrial implementation. Currently, it has comprehensively empowered core fields such as consumer electronics, smart healthcare, smart robots, and industrial intelligent manufacturing, profoundly reshaping the public's lifestyle and industrial development models.
Looking forward to 2026 to 2035, with the entry of brand-new material systems such as living biological materials, continuous breakthroughs in core material performance, deep integration and empowerment of artificial intelligence technology, and comprehensive acceleration of industrial implementation, flexible sensitive materials will further evolve into a "sixth sensory organ" to assist human perception, building a core bridge for seamless intelligent interaction between humans and machines, humans and the environment, and equipment and scenarios. It will gradually realize the intelligence of robot touch, the whole-process non-invasiveness of medical monitoring, the unnoticeable and naturalness of human-machine interaction, and the all-weather normalization of health protection, continuously innovating the industrial ecology in fields such as electronic information, smart healthcare, and high-end intelligent manufacturing, driving frontier technological changes with basic material innovation, and continuously injecting core power into the construction of a global smart society.
Author | Guo Yuansheng, Deputy Director of the Science and Technology Committee of the Central Committee of the Jiusan Society and Executive Vice Chairman of the China Sensor and IoT Industry Alliance
Editor | Yang Pengyue Art Editor | Ma Liya Supervisor | Lian Xiaodong