Engineering Hierarchical Porous Laser-Induced Graphene Enabled by Microsphere Soft-Templating for Dual-Mode Capacitive Pressure Sensing

Abstract

Abstract Laser-induced graphene (LIG) has emerged as a promising platform for pressure sensing due to its good performance and facile laser-patterning capability. However, its performance is often constrained by limited porous microstructure tunability and low capacitive sensitivity. Herein, we develop a soft-template-assisted strategy for constructing hierarchical porous LIG by incorporating size-tunable polystyrene (PS) microspheres into a phenolic resin matrix. The photothermal effect simultaneously drives graphitization of the phenolic resin and decomposition of sacrificial PS templates, resulting in hierarchical porous graphene architectures. The controllability of the micropore size in LIG can be easily achieved by the PS microspheres. Thereafter, the resulting hierarchical porous LIG was used as an electrode to fabricate a capacitive pressure sensor. The sensor exhibits good capacitive response performance under static pressure and dynamic vibration conditions. This direct porous graphene synthesis provides a scalable route for engineering hierarchical porous graphene and offers insights into structure–property relationships for high-performance sensing applications in electronics and machine monitoring.