Combining with their outstanding mechanical, electrical properties, chemical inertness and large piezoresistive effect, amorphous carbon (a-C) films have been proposed as one promising sensitive material, especially in some harsh environments. In this work, a series of a-C films were produced using PVD method, their piezoresistive behavior, performances of MEMS sensors and stretchable strain sensors were investigated. Results showed that piezoresistive gauge factor (GF) of a-C depended on their sp² content and the sp² cluster size, a-C based MEMS force sensor had a sensitivity of 9.8 V/V/mN and non-linearity about 2.0% FS in the testing range of 0–210 mN, a-C/PDMS stretchable strain sensor displayed a maximum gauge factor of 746.7 and strain range up to 0.5, with a satisfactory repeatability for 5000 cycles
 

amorphous carbon films, piezoresistive behavior, applications