The tactile pressure sensor is of great significance in flexible electronics, but sensitivity customization over the required working range with high linearity still remains a critical challenge. Despite numerous efforts to achieve high sensitivity and a wide working range, most sensitive microstructures tend to be obtained only by inverting naturally existing templates without rational design based on fundamental contact principles or models for piezoresistive pressure sensors. Here, a positive design strategy with a hyperelastic model and a Hertzian contact model for comparison was proposed to develop a flexible pressure sensor with highly customizable linear sensitivity and linearity, in which the microstructure distribution was precalculated according to the desired requirement prior to fabrication. As a proof of concept, three flexible pressure sensors exhibited sensitivities of 0.7, 1.0, and 1.3 kPa⁻¹ over a linear region of up to 200 kPa, with a low sensitivity error (<5%) and high linearity (~0.99), as expected. Based on the superior electromechanical performance of these sensors, potential applications in physiological signal recognition are demonstrated as well, and such a strategy could shed more light on demand-oriented scenarios, including designable working ranges and linear sensitivity for next-generation wearable devices.

Magnetically actuated micro/nanorobots are typical micro- and nanoscale artificial devices with favorable attributes of quick response, remote and contactless control, harmless human-machine interaction and high economic efficiency. Under external magnetic actuation strategies, they are capable of achieving elaborate manipulation and navigation in extreme biomedical environments. This review focuses on state-of-the-art progresses in design strategies, fabrication techniques and applications of magnetically actuated micro/nanorobots. Firstly, recent advances of various robot designs, including helical robots, surface walkers, ciliary robots, scaffold robots and biohybrid robots, are discussed separately. Secondly, the main progresses of common fabrication techniques are respectively introduced, and application achievements on these robots in targeted drug delivery, minimally invasive surgery and cell manipulation are also presented. Finally, a short summary is made, and the current challenges and future work for magnetically actuated micro/nanorobots are discussed.

Flexible force sensors are of great interest in the fields of healthcare, physiological signals, and aircraft smart skin applications because of their compatibility with curved surfaces. However, the simultaneous detection of multidirectional forces remains an engineering challenge, despite the great progress made in recent years. Herein, we present the development of a flexible capacitive force sensor capable of efficiently distinguishing normal and sliding shear forces. A two-layer electrospun polyimide/graphene oxide (PI/GO) nanofiber membrane is used as the dielectric layer, which is sandwiched between one top electrode and four symmetrically distributed bottom electrodes. This composite membrane has an improved dielectric constant, a reduced friction coefficient, and good compressibility, leading to superior performance that includes high sensitivity over a wide operational range with measured results of 3 MPa ⁻¹ for 0–242 kPa (0–2.2 N) and 0.92 MPa ⁻¹ for 242–550 kPa (2.2–5 N) in the normal direction; and better than 1 N ⁻¹ for 0–3 N in the x - and y -axis directions. The system also has a low detection limit of 10 Pa, fast response and recovery times of 39 ms and 13 ms, respectively, a good cyclic stability of 10,000 cycles at a pressure of 176 kPa, and promising potential for use in high-temperature environments (200 °C). Moreover, a prototype 4 × 4 sensor array has been fabricated and successfully used in a robotic system to grasp objects and operate a wireless toy car. As such, the proposed system could offer superior capabilities in simultaneous multidirectional force sensing for applications such as intelligent robots, human–machine interaction, and smart skin.