A team of scientists at the University of California and the Berkeley Lab has succeeded in developing whiskers like sensors. The sensors have successfully passed the tests performed on them during various sensing experiments.

The scientists used paste of carbon nanotubes and silver nano particles to develop the sensors. First they made a bendable and electrically-conductive matrix with the paste and later a thin film of silver nanoparticles was used to notice any strain.

This whisker-like sensor is capable of sensing pressure even if it is as low as only one Pascal. As explained, this amount of pressure is equal to the pressure caused by a dollar bill on table.

"Our electronic whiskers consist of high-aspect-ratio elastic fibers coated with conductive composite films of nanotubes and nanoparticles. In tests, these whiskers were 10 times more sensitive to pressure than all previously reported capacitive or resistive pressure sensors", said researcher Ali Javey.

The researchers, who worked on the development, say that the e-whiskers might be used for mediating tactile sensing in future. This tactile sensing could be used for spatial mapping of the objects in proximity. The whiskers might also be developed as wearable sensors so that they could be used for the check-up of pulse rate and heartbeat. These recently developed whiskers are very light in weight and can be fabricated easily.