Interlayer Contact-Regulated Porous Iontronic Pressure Sensors for Wearable and Robotic Applications

In recent years, iontronic pressure sensors have attracted widespread attention in fields such as wearable devices, health monitoring, and human–machine interaction due to their excellent pressure perception capabilities. However, their further development remains constrained by the inherent trade-off between complex fabrication processes and sensing performance. Compared with high-performance devices that rely on complex micro/nanofabrication, iontronic pressure sensors constructed based on porous sponge skeletons offer greater potential for low-cost fabrication, yet they universally face the critical challenge of ineffective regulation over interfacial contact states. To address this, we developed a high-performance porous iontronic pressure sensor (PIPS) by integrating a facile dip-coating process with an interlayer contact modulation strategy. By introducing and optimizing the spacer layer, the PIPS effectively regulates the initiation and evolution of interfacial contact, thereby improving its overall sensing performance. Benefiting from this, the PIPS exhibits a peak sensitivity of 216.82 kPa –1, a broad working range of 0–500 kPa, and outstanding durability over 10,000 cycles. As a proof of concept, the PIPS enabled cross-scale detection ranging from subtle local human motions to large-scale whole-body movements, and also demonstrated potential in assistive communication. Furthermore, coupled with machine learning algorithms, a soft robotic gripper integrated with the PIPS can precisely recognize eight objects with varying hardness, achieving an accuracy of 98.44%.